Context
It's mid-2025 and someone I meet online suggests coaching.
Until this point, most of my offers have been products: courses, ebooks, software. But after several years of experimenting online, I start wondering whether there's a more direct way I can help people.
Eventually, the person who suggested coaching becomes my mentor. In exchange for a share of the revenue, he helps me launch my first coaching offer.
Effort
The idea of coaching people online feels intimidating at first. But working with someone who's done it before gives me enough confidence to try.
Since I'd had some success growing my YouTube channel, I decide to help developers build and monetize channels of their own.
I create a free Skool community, start mentioning it in videos, and slowly begin building an audience around the idea. Over time, more people join and my email list starts growing again.
Eventually I launch an eight-week coaching program priced at $1,600.
For the first time, I start doing sales calls. The calls feel uncomfortable initially, especially because the program barely exists yet. But over the following weeks, I focus almost entirely on speaking to prospects and trying to land clients.
Outcome
Eventually, I land my first client.
For eight weeks, we work closely together through weekly calls while I simultaneously build out the course material for the program itself.
After the first round finishes, I launch again and sign three more clients.
Financially, it's easily my most successful offer so far, generating over $6,000 in four months.
But emotionally, something feels off.
The constant calls leave me drained and some clients don't get the results I'd hoped for. By the end of the second cohort, I feel exhausted rather than excited to continue.
Lesson
This project made me realize that a successful offer still needs to fit your personality and the way you actually want to work.
Without really thinking about it, I'd copied the structure of my mentor's coaching business — group calls, community, course material, constant interaction — because I assumed that's what coaching was supposed to look like.
But as the program continued, I started realizing that parts of it felt emotionally unsustainable for me.
At the same time, I also became more aware of how much responsibility comes with coaching. Even though clients ultimately have to do the work themselves, I still felt deeply invested in whether they followed through and got results.
The experience made me want to find a calmer, more natural way of helping people online.
Numbers
- Time to first sale
- 2 months
- Price
- $1,600
- Total sales
- 4
- Revenue
- $6,221
If you're trying to move from thinking about something to actually building it, I occasionally work one-to-one with people here.