How I went from living on a council estate to making £16m

• Lisa Johnson is a business strategist and host of podcast Making Money Online
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A mother-of-twins who went from being £35,000 in debt to earning £16m over just six years has revealed the steps she took to get herself into the black – and she’s teaching others how to do it too.

Sunday Times-bestselling author Lisa Johnson, 46, turned her life around after growing up on a council estate and being bullied at school.

She’s now a global business strategist helping ambitious people to create passive and semi-passive income streams – ie. regular earnings from a source other than your employer.

Since 2017, Lisa has helped more than 50,000 budding entrepreneurs through her One To Many course and Race To Recurring Revenue challenge – and some have even become millionaires themselves.

In the past seven years, Lisa has made £16 million – and says she once earned £1 million in an hour.

Lisa Johnson (pictured), 46, is a global business strategist and a host of the number one podcast Making Money Online

Since 2017, Lisa has helped more than 50,000 budding entrepreneurs through her online courses – and some have even become millionaires

Lisa welcomed her twin sons Finnian and Albert 12 years ago. At that time, her marriage was failing and she was forced to go back to work when they were just five months old

As well as making millions from her business product launches, Lisa is a host of a number one podcast, Making Money Online, and a passionate anti-bullying ambassador.

Lisa said: ‘When I first started this business, all I wanted to do was be able to leave my job. I thought, “If I could make £2,000 a month, that would be it.” That’s all I wanted.

‘In 2021, during the global pandemic, I made £2.5m in one week – £1m in the first hour from sales from one launch alone. I take Joe Bloggs off the street and teach them how to make money from the knowledge that is in their head.

‘And it doesn’t have to be too complex – it could be someone who teaches hula-hooping, or sewing patterns, it doesn’t matter.’

Lisa added: ‘Remember that an expert is the person that knows the most about a particular subject in an average room, not on the internet or in the world.’

Lisa grew up living in social housing and was badly bullied for being poor and wearing second-hand clothing. When she was 16, another student threatened her with a knife, so she left school in fear for her safety – all the while being told she wouldn’t amount to anything.

She started working full time as an admin assistant, but at the age of 23 she decided she was destined for more.

Lisa said: ‘I asked myself, ‘what’s a hard thing to do that not all people might be able to do and it will tell you whether they’re right and you’re not worth anything or whether they’re wrong?’

Lisa began studying for her law degree at the age of 27 and has had successful careers in law, banking and the entertainment industry

‘I decided to do a degree because I thought if I can get a degree while working full time, and I get a decent mark, then that means I can do anything.

‘So that’s what I did. I got a law degree at 27 while working and I realised I could become whoever I wanted to be. That’s when it all started, I climbed the corporate ladder and the rest is history.’

Lisa went on to have successful careers in law, banking and the entertainment industry but, despite all she had achieved, she felt unfulfilled and as though she was on the wrong path.

When she welcomed her twin boys Finnian and Albert 12 years ago, Lisa realised she was spending more on childcare than her personal assistant job was bringing in.

She said: ‘I’d done quite well getting into this job in Canary Wharf and was earning £60,000 – no one else from the council estate I grew up in was making that. So I thought I’d done well.

‘Then I got pregnant with the twins and my marriage was failing. So I had to go back to work when they were five months old and I realised very quickly that it wasn’t going to work.

‘I needed a 9-5 job near my house and secured a junior admin assistant role, meaning I went from earning £60,000 to a £20,000 job.’

Believing that there must be a better way financially, she set up her own wedding planning business – but admitted that she ‘made all the mistakes’ because she had no idea what she was doing.

Unfulfilled by her corporate careers, Lisa now works with entrepreneurs to help them turn the ‘knowledge in their head’ into passive and semi-passive income streams

Within six months of launching her strategy business, Lisa had made £100,000 in profit. She went on to earn £220,000 in her first year and by the end of year two she had made over £1 million

It was a tricky start, with Lisa falling £35,000 into debt – but after dedicating her time to learning as much as she could about business, she turned things around to make the business profitable in just five months.

She said: ‘I then spent a year going to every free webinar, I couldn’t afford to pay for anything because my credit cards were all maxed out.

‘So I just went to the library, read every single business book I could get my hands on and I turned that business around to be profitable.’

Lisa then started to teach others everything she’d learned about business.

In 2017, she realised helping people grow their businesses and scale them online was her passion so she launched her strategy business.

Within six months she’d made £100,000 in profit, £220,000 in the first year and over a million by the end of year two.

Now she’s offering her programmes to those just starting out in business and those who are looking to scale their companies up to seven figures.

Through her first course, One To Many, which is a programme to teach entrepreneurs how to make money online, Lisa developed the CASHH system (her five key steps to making passive income online).

Lisa said: ‘I realised as I was teaching people how to make passive income, I was saying the same thing over and again. These are the five steps to make passive income to make money online.

When people complain that they don’t have the time or resources to realise their business goals, Lisa reminds them that she was a single parent with four-year-old twins and a full-time job when she started

‘The C stands for client – before you work out whether you want a membership or whether you want a course, you need to work out who you want to help and who that client is.

‘Then you go onto the A which is for audience. You grow an audience of those people that you said you wanted to help. That could be in a Facebook group, on an email list, on Instagram. You put them somewhere so that you can talk to them.

‘Then the first S is structure and systems. It’s become really easy with systems like Kartra and Kajabi that help you work out how to get your course to people.

‘So an online platform where you can put your courses and your membership, and then you just need to work out the structure of it – ie – do you prefer audio, video or work books etc?’

The next S in CASSH stands for ‘selling’ – which Lisa calls ‘launching’ – so it’s all about how to ‘launch’ a course online.

She believes one of the keys to her success and making a lot of money in one go is because she’s learned how to launch. Now, she can make £2million when she launches a new product. Finally, the H in CASSH stands for happy.

Lisa said: ‘Remember that with any passive income – it’s not very passive at the beginning. You’re learning how to launch, you’re learning how to write a course and you’re growing an audience.

‘It only becomes passive the second, third, fourth, fifth time that you’ve put it out there in exactly the same way. But the only way you will get there is if the clients are happy, because then they tell other people about it.’

Lisa, who was bullied as a child for being poor and wearing second-hand clothing, is a passionate anti-bullying campaigner

When people complain that it’s ‘impossible’ or blame ‘hectic schedules’ for their lack of success, Lisa reminds them that she was a single parent with four-year-old twins and had a full-time job when she started.

Lisa worked on her business from 5-6am, in her lunch break and from 9-10pm to build. One of her top tips is encouraging people to turn off Netflix for an hour at night and that will give them the time they need to start to build a business.

Then after a few years of putting it all together and working hard, she insists they’ll be time-rich due to their passive income stream.

As well as making millions from these business product launches, Lisa is also a host of the Making Money Online podcast, which sees her share invaluable tips on how time-poor people can build successful, lucrative businesses.

Plus, she’s passionate about helping the bullied, the bullies and bystanders through her work.

She said: ‘I’ve been bullied by everybody from day one – by classmates, by competitors, by my own coaches, by clients, all sorts of people, but I know how to deal with it now.

‘I now realise that no response is a response. You don’t have to get involved. One To Many now makes me millions each year, but the big thing for me is now to make a difference to others.’

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