Shirag’s 7-Figure Profit Playbook In early 2015, Shirag didn’t have a real business yet. He had been helping a few students get into medical school and top colleges on the side, and his website was nothing more than an “electronic business card.” SHIRAG JOINED ONE OF OUR PROGRAMS, WORKED HARD, AND NOW HIS BUSINESS EARNS 7 FIGURES He has a team of academic consultants, gets over 100,000 monthly visitors to his website, and has helped thousands of students get accepted to America’s top colleges, medical schools, and law schools. In this PDF, Shirag is going to show you how the Profit Playbook he created in 2015 led to the successful 7-figure business he has today. As you read, notice that not everything he wrote down ended up making its way into his profitable business. Some ideas were promising, some were a dead end, and some led him to even BIGGER ideas. Remember, your Profit Playbook isn’t meant to be a perfect prediction of the future. It’s just meant to be an initial plan to get you started on growing your business. E A R N E R 6 F I G U R E Profit Playbook : 1. Potential audiences These two turned out to be our best audiences. This became obvious pretty early on, especially #2: the parents are the ones with the money. Our main customer is the concerned immigrant parent who wants their kid to pursue education at the highest level. They know how high the stakes are and they have a straightforward, no-bs style. They come to me because they know I understand that: I came from immigrant parents, so my clients are basically my parents! • Bright students who feel they’re not unique • Concerned parents who want their kid to attend the best schools • College counselors who want to help students write their essays • Administrators who want to boost their school’s profile • Students who have not experienced “hardship” This audience ended up being a dead-end. I tried calling many college counselors in high schools and the response was typically “we already offer that, and we don’t endorse any commercial businesses. Please do not contact our school again.” We found much more success reaching parents and students directly through our blog. • ThinkThank YouTube page • The Choice blog • Montgomery Educational Counseling • Wise Choice • Buzzfeed • College Confidential 2. Fishing holes It’s funny looking back at this, because NONE of these fishing holes produced good results. That’s OK, because we found an even better one – our blog. We write articles around the real pains and questions our ideal customers have and it generates a great deal of organic traffic. We just hit 100K monthly visits! The next two biggest fishing holes have been speaking gigs at college and high school campuses and being interviewed on entrepreneur and business podcasts. I reached out to both of these sites to do a guest post, and both said no. I didn’t realize that at the time, but I am a competitor to their business so they wouldn’t want to send any traffic my way. This is a forum like Reddit. Even though I didn’t use this to find clients directly, it was a great tool for customer research. • Self-exploration • Idea generation • Hook creation • Cliche destruction • Detail filling • Perfecting transitions • Closing the loop 4. Crunchy solutions This is another area where my initial ideas are still very useful. We use all of these solutions in our 1-on-1 consulting. I initially brainstormed these when I was considering creating an online course. We’re still 100% 1-on-1 consulting but a course is on my list to revisit. All of these burning pains are pretty spot on! Each of these are direct quotes from my early research. Years later, I continue to hear them almost every week. I’ve spoken to thousands of people and I still do all the sales calls. I don’t even write down the quotes anymore because they say the same exact things over and over again! This list of burning pains is still helpful in many areas of my business. For example, when I sit down to write copy, I just pluck direct quotes from this list. Then I have clients come to me and say, “Wow! I read your site and I really feel like you understand where I’m coming from” or “how did you know that was what I was thinking this week?” And I say, “because you guys tell me!” “Getting into the college of my dreams” “I think a lot of people are, or at least I was, worried that writing on that topic would probably lead to a cliche lesson: I learned never to give up, I learned it didn’t matter anyways, I learned to try harder, I learned anything is possible, I learned winning isn’t everything, etc. I was also a little worried that I would pick something too trivial as my failure.” “I’m drawing a blank on all these topics [for essays]” “None of these [essay] topics fit me, to be honest, and #1 is the closest to being it...I really live a normal life, didn’t make failures worthy of writing essays, never challenged a belief... #1 is my priority right now, and I am observing my lifestyle to help me distinguish what makes me who I am.” “I’m working on the first [essay] prompt, I have no idea how to even begin the other four lol.” 3. Burning pains READY TO THINK BIGGER? Most successful students who completed the Profit Playbook discovered that they need to think bigger. We have a course on that, called Mental Mastery . It gives you the tools you need to crack the mental blocks that have been holding you back for years and replace them with the four core inner skills of winners: unshakable confidence, unwavering focus, unstoppable motivation, and unbeatable optimism. Learn more here B I O G R A P H Y: Shirag is the founder and CEO of Shemmassian Academic Consulting, an admissions consulting business that helps high-achieving students get into elite colleges, medical schools, and law schools. • Step-by-step writing ebook • 1-on-1 live interview coaching • Phone brainstorm session • Complete application consulting package • Weekend bootcamp 5. Products to sell This idea ended up becoming our free opt-in offer . We realized our ideal customers wanted something really comprehensive in order to give their email address. In our niche, people seem to be over “Top 10 Tips” and lists. They want the nitty gritty, they want to nerd out on everything there is to know about writing college essays. So we gave it to them. These 3 product ideas have made us a lot of money. They are our core offerings. We haven’t done this yet but I would love to revisit it.