I went from £35,000 in debt to making a million in one hour

Lisa Johnson couldn’t believe her eyes as she watched the views increase and the money continue to trickle into her account.

After nearly an hour of her speech, Lisa’s husband interrupts her with some astonishing news.

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She earned £1 million in just 60 minutes as an online business consultant to thousands of online clients, a figure that would rise to £2.5 million in the same week.

But the phenomenal success that 46-year-old Lisa, a Sunday Times bestselling author and business consultant, is now experiencing stands in stark contrast to her humble beginnings.

Speaking as part of Life Stories, the new YouTube series which captures the extraordinary lives of ordinary people, Lisa says: “My childhood was quite ordinary, growing up in a council house in Lincolnshire.

“My parents split up when I was about 11. After that, my dad was a single dad raising me and my siblings and we had a really hard time.

“I was the person in the second-hand uniform and I was the person who had a ticket for a free school meal.

“I was bullied a lot.”

Lisa struggled at school and left with only some mediocre GCSE grades.

“I’ve hardly ever been there,” she admits.

“When you hear every day that you are stupid, poor and ugly, you start to believe that it is true.

“I didn’t really think I would make anything of it, I made peace with it.”

At the lowest point in her life, Lisa admitted that years of brutal bullying had left her feeling suicidal.

“I had to make a decision whether I wanted to be here or not,” she says.

“I thought maybe all those bullies were right and that maybe I would never amount to anything.

“I decided to give myself one chance to see if I could do something hard and give myself a challenge. If I could do it, maybe it would be a sign that the bullies were wrong.”

While working full-time as a personal assistant, Lisa began studying law at the age of 27, spending the next four years studying and gaining a BA Hons degree.

“I decided not to become a lawyer, that wasn’t something I wanted to do,” she says.

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“I guess I just wanted to prove to myself that I could do it if I wanted to.

“Instead, I ended up moving up the career ladder in investment banking as a risk analyst in Canary Wharf.”

Although Lisa earned a healthy £60,000 salary after having twins Finnian and Albert 12 years ago, she realised her marriage was on the rocks and she needed a 9-to-5 job close to home.

This landed her a job as a junior administrative assistant, meaning she went from a salary of £60,000 to a job of £20,000.

She returned to work when her little ones were just five months old. As a single mother, she realized she was spending more money on childcare than her job as a personal assistant was bringing in.

She desperately tries to find a balance between earning enough to support her family and not being chained to her desk.

In the first year I made all the business mistakes you can make

Lisa Johnson

In 2013 she decided to start her own wedding planning company.

However, she admitted she had no idea what she was doing and her debts rose to £35,000.

She explains: “In the first year I made every business mistake you can make.

“I was £35,000 in debt, earning about £1.50 an hour and still working full-time.

Lisa’s lavish life

LISA previously opened up to Fabulous about her extravagant lifestyle.

She said: “We now have opportunities that I didn’t have before.

“I can take my friends and colleagues with me in a private jet every year.

“I have been on holiday everywhere. We have been to Las Vegas with the children, the Maldives, we have been to Dubai a few times, Malta too and we have stayed in the most beautiful hotels.

“I also travel a lot for my work. I organize retreats for people and we do that in Los Angeles, Miami and Croatia.”

Not only can Lisa travel the world, she has also purchased a luxury apartment.

She continues: “I used to spend a lot of money on myself and I love bags, but I realised about two years ago that when you first get money, you spend a lot because you’ve never had it before.

“Now I have bought real estate so that my money is invested and the money makes me money.

“We just bought a multimillion-pound house because that’s more of an investment.”

“So I went to the library and got every business and self-development book I could find.

“I went to free webinars and things like that to learn more about doing business.”

Thanks to the strategies she taught herself, Lisa’s wedding business slowly started to improve and within five months she was fully booked for the next year and a half.

Then the penny dropped for the mother.

“People started asking me how I did it,” she explains.

“I discovered that I am good at converting the information I read into practical information instead of jargon.

“People who followed my advice came back and told me they had made three times as much money as normal.

“Then I started what is now known as That strategy Comy business strategy company, which has evolved and brought me to where I am today.”

For Lisa, becoming a multimillionaire was never her goal. The mother of two initially wanted to earn just £2,000 a month.

But her business quickly grew into a success that exceeded her expectations: in her first six months she made £100,000.

“I decided to invest half of everything I made that first year into learning as much as I could about passive income streams,” she says.

“I slowly started integrating those methods into my business.

“Some things didn’t work, some things worked a little bit, and I improved them and some things worked really well.

“Passive income is doing something once and making money from it over and over again.

“By the end of that first year I had earned £220,000, but I was probably working 80 hours a week.

“By the end of the second year, I was working 30 hours a month and making over a million.”

Lisa realized that she could create a set formula for her business coaching that could be used and sold over and over again.

She explains: “All of my clients were asking the same questions, so I realised I could teach 100 of these people at once and make money from it.

I helped homeless people earn money, and now they are millionaires

Lisa Johnson

“I created and put courses, memberships and workshops on the internet.

“Some of them I taught live, but a thousand people showed up, and some of them were pre-recorded.

“That gave me all that time back, but also a lot more money, and in one week I had made £2.7 million.”

In the past seven years, Lisa has earned over £20 million and written a Sunday Times bestseller called Make Money Online.

And while her wealth is a welcome bonus, Lisa says the biggest benefit of her business is being able to help others achieve their dreams and make money.

“I have helped people who were homeless and living in poverty so that they could make money, and now they are millionaires,” she says.

“It’s not easy, but I believe anyone can follow a process and make money with the knowledge they have.”

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