How Shana, a CPA Consultant, Went from Nearly Closing Her Business to Six Figures by Direct Messaging the Network She Already Had

Have you ever thought: "I know I can help a lot of people” but had trouble articulating how?  

For many multi-passionate business owners, figuring out how to describe their work – and which business to focus on – feels daunting. This is exactly how my client, Shana Cooper, felt last year.

Shana works as a CPA consultant, helping accounting firms and internal accounting teams develop their people, optimize their work, and operate more strategically. She also has a business as a personal finance coach, to help individuals manage their money better. 

On paper, her credentials were strong, and yet, her LinkedIn profile was unclear as she tiptoed between her two distinct businesses. She was barely booking any sales calls because her posts and outreach lacked focus and specificity.

When we started working together, she and her husband were having serious conversations about whether she should close her business and return to traditional full-time employment.

Today, after about 6 months working together, she boasts a six-figure consultancy, a $5,000/month retainer client (closed thanks to the outreach strategies I taught her in my program Leads on LinkedIn), and a simple, repeatable system for generating new business from the relationships she already has.

Here is the story of how she got there.

Shana was working hard but going in circles

Prior to working together, Shana was not waiting passively for clients to come to her. She was actively reaching out to potential clients and trying to generate leads across two businesses simultaneously.

But her messages went unanswered, and even when she booked calls, her prospects didn’t see her as a strategic partner. Instead, they saw her as an hourly freelancer. She struggled with her positioning and lacked momentum on LinkedIn, describing it as “quicksand”. She knew she should be posting more, and that she needed a better profile but didn't know what "good" actually looked like — or how to get there. She was connecting with referral partners and people adjacent to her ideal clients — not the clients who actually needed her help.

As she explained it, everything was "just confusing,” she explained, “because I had these two businesses and wanted to share about both of them."

She had worked with other coaches and tried different strategies. Her husband could see the effort (and all the hours of work), but neither of them saw the results. That's why she began to seriously consider going back to being an employee.

We optimized Shana’s profile to focus on her highest-revenue business potential 

Shana found my work by listening to me on a podcast and began following me on LinkedIn. She signed up for my done-for-you LinkedIn Profile Optimization service, eager to finally feel understood on LinkedIn by her prospects.

Like many consultants, Shana had technically filled out her LinkedIn profile. But filling out a profile isn't the same as having one that works for your business and builds trust behind-the-scenes. 

Shana and I discussed the options for her profile, and we decided to focus primarily on The AccountAbility Team, her consulting practice for accounting firms, rather than both businesses. Of course, we didn’t remove the other business from her profile. 

Shana was resistant at first. As she put it, it felt like "a part of my identity was being peeled out." Her other business, though, wasn't going away. It just wasn't going to be the primary focus of her LinkedIn profile. 

Through the profile optimization process, she realized that, “[Other consultants] think that they have redone their profile…but they really haven't." 

Check out her “live” profile here.

We clarified who she serves (accounting firms), how she helps them (developing their teams and optimizing how they work), and what someone should do after landing on her page (book a call).

This foundation matters because when you reach out to someone on LinkedIn, the first thing they do is look at your profile. If what they see doesn't match what you said, or doesn't make your value immediately clear, the conversation stalls before it starts.

Now that her profile was dialed in, Shana was ready to move into doing outreach.

Shana joined my program Leads on LinkedIn and activated her existing network 

After completing the profile optimization, Shana felt clear about who she serves and wanted to bring more traffic to her LinkedIn profile and activate the wide network she already had. So, she joined my two-month coaching program Leads on LinkedIn. She was eager to learn the skill of direct outreach, so that she could fill gaps in her client roster with higher-level clients who would treat her as a partner rather than a task do-er. 

She devoured my two-hour curriculum, in which she learned my Inside-Out Outreach framework. I showed her how to leverage the relationships she already has — former colleagues, past clients, and people she’s stayed loosely in touch with over the years. Since these are people who she already knows, and who already know her, they are far more likely to respond, refer her, or become clients themselves.

Although Shana had a large network, built over decades working in accounting, she didn’t know how to activate them. Once she started using her new and improved outreach skills, she began sending outreach messages consistently (~10 a week), using email and LinkedIn, and focusing primarily on people who she suspected needed her services.

A $8,000 contract closed before our first coaching call

One of Shana's early wins happened before we even met for our first coaching session.

She started using the word-for-word templates from my curriculum, and reached out to someone she’d had a conversation with about a year earlier. He responded that he wished she'd reached out sooner. Although he still had budget available for her services, he didn't think there was enough time left in the year to use it.

I helped her craft a response through my unlimited DM reviews that are included in the program. Her response secured a call with him the following day. And, since Shana's offer was now clearly defined, he easily understood exactly what she did, they skipped the typical exploratory phase and went straight into discussing scope.

That conversation led to a signed $8,000 contract — her biggest one-time engagement to date. She delivered the work over the holidays, and it gave her both a financial runway and a new level of confidence.

Shana’s role shifted from transactional to strategic

Since working with me, Shana has shifted away from hourly pricing toward higher-priced projects and retainer engagements. 

Shana had spent years as a subcontractor, doing excellent work inside other firms' structures. The accounting world defaults to hourly billing, and her clients were accustomed to that arrangement. On our coaching calls, we defined how she wants to work with clients and created her unique coaching frameworks. 

We also worked on the mindset and mechanics of asking for higher prices, both in Leads on LinkedIn, and after, when she joined my Monthly Coaching Program.

She was thrilled when a client she had been working with in a less structured way converted to a $5,000/month retainer, thanks to her thoughtful yet grounded approach to the conversation. In her words, the clarity of her offer and the way she was now presenting her work made the conversation feel strategic rather than transactional.

Other clients also began seeing her that way. One of them asked her directly: "How are you getting your clients?" Another told her she wanted to be "as professional as you."

Shana is now stepping into the identity of someone who “gets marketing”! I love that for her. 

What changed

Before: Shana started with two businesses and an unclear LinkedIn profile. Clients described her business better than she could, and she and her husband were discussing whether she should go back to working in-house. 

Now: A focused, six-figure consultancy. She closed an $8,000 contract and $5,000/month retainer from sending relationship-based outreach and positioning her work as strategic, rather than transactional . She now relies on a simple outreach system and has the confidence to position and price her work at its actual value.

Shana’s message for other consultants looking to create more demand for their services on LinkedIn

When asked what she'd say to someone considering working together, Shana's advice was simple: "Do it sooner rather than later. Trust the process, because it really does work."

If Shana's story sounds familiar — if you're working hard, have real expertise, and have a network you're not fully activating — here's what working together looks like.

When we work together, I'll help you achieve results like Shana. Here's how we'll do that:

Step 1: We always start with a done-for-you LinkedIn Profile Optimization so that you clearly explain your credibility, who you serve, how you serve them, and what action the profile viewer should take.

This process takes under a month from start to finish, and provides you a profile that captures the attention of your ideal clients and gets them to take action.

Step 2: Once your profile is optimized, we then create your LinkedIn strategy so you can get in front of the right audience and attract more interest in your offerings.

This coaching program takes two months. We focus on two main skills - LinkedIn posting and direct messaging. These skills bring the right clients into your orbit so you can consistently grow your business without relying on time-consuming strategies like videos and expensive strategies like ads. 

In the first 30 days of the program, you'll have identified and contacted 30 prospects for your business. You'll have the skills and systems to do it again whenever you want an influx of leads. And, this rinse-and-repeat process gets more effective every time you do it!

Learn more and enroll here.