This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Side Hustle School listeners, hello and welcome. My name is Chris Guillebeau, I am your host. Today is episode 244, bringing you yet another story of someone who starts an income generating project. Now before I tell you that story, I ran into somebody yesterday who told me he's been listening to the show for a while and told his friend about it, and his friend has actually started a project that's making more than $1,000 a month since applying some of the lessons and starting some kind of business that has something to do with balloons. I don't actually remember all the details I just said, please tell your friend to write into us so we know about that and we can feature it.
More and more of the stories that I'm bringing you actually come from our community, from people who've been listening for a while or have just kind of jumped in and started their own project. So if that's you, I would love to know. A couple of different ways you can get in touch on the sidehustleschool.com site. If you click the about page and scroll to the bottom, there's a little tab that says submit your side hustle story. Conveniently, when you click that tab, you can submit your side hustle story.
And the more details you can give us, the better. The more details, the higher the likelihood that we could feature it on the show. Or if you don't want us to feature it, that's totally fine. I would just love to know myself what you're doing, what you're working on. So alternatively, if you don't want to do the survey, just send a quick note to Whitney, my assistant.
She's the one who makes the wonderful show notes on the site. Her email is Whitney@sidehustleschool.com. That's Whitney, W-H-I-T-N-E-Y. Anyway, today's story is about a new mother who gives life not only to a baby, but also a self-care coaching business. That story right after a quick shout out to our sponsor.
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When Bertia Cubeca was preparing to give birth, she knew she'd be bringing something new and joyful and full of life into the world. But little did she know that her pregnancy and the few weeks postpartum would also lead to bringing a new side hustle into the world. In those weeks between giving birth and returning to her job as an ultrasound technician, Bertia found herself in dire need of a routine. Some structure, some way to manage her time and energy around her new baby and prepare herself for going back to the working world. So in May 2016, she decided to create a website called Fringe and Fitness, where she taught women about fitness and self-care.
And in what was a bit of an afterthought for a revenue model, she recommended a few water bottles and tank tops on the side. But let's go back a bit. When she was seven years old, Bertia had her first seizure and became hyper aware of her body and what it was telling her. But that wasn't her only influence at such a young age. She'd also watched her mother slave away and put everyone before herself and Bertia vowed to never follow the same route.
Instead, she chose to make decisions that made her healthier and happier and give her body and mind what they needed. Thus allowing her to be a better friend or a partner or a mother. And then jumping ahead to her later years, Bertia had worked as a fitness coach where she was fascinated by classes that allowed her to explore how the human body worked. But time and time again, no matter what principle she worked with, the women she trained didn't make the progress they wanted. It was only when she began to focus on the self-care required outside of fitness and nutrition that the women began to see that progress they'd been looking for.
And now let's go to that website she started in the few weeks following the birth of her child. After the site was up and she had the tank tops and water bottles for sale, she also began to offer her services as a coach, either on a one-on-one or a group basis. And not being scared to charge what she's worth, she began with prices beginning at $550 for a group session. As she got a response, she began to invest money in the business, a process that she admits has been trickier than she imagined. She spent a total of $13,000 on getting it off the ground.
Since she was a coach herself, she chose to invest in courses, coaches, and conferences to improve the skills that she felt she was lacking or just weakened. She also worked with a few freelancers to help her with products and product designs. Ratiya did manage to save some money with her website by enlisting her sister to create the site and user experience, which she now maintains herself without any outside help. In terms of marketing, there were a few false starts and she found that boosting posts on Facebook was a waste of time, at least for her. However, when she began going through social media herself, connecting with entrepreneurs and her target women one-on-one where they hang out online, this could be anywhere from Facebook groups, to forums, to blog comments, she decided to spend time offering to help those people for free, cheer them on, share her knowledge wherever she could.
And she's found this to be a better lead generation strategy than anything else, including paying for those Facebook ads. So far, Ratiya has managed to generate around $8,000 in sales through her coaching and products, and she's expanded her product range to include affirmation cards. Factoring in those startup costs, this means she still has a ways to go to get profitable. But with a new product launch on the way, she's expecting to increase her income to about $2,500 a month, and then eclipse those initial fees. For her, the best part of the experience has been working with other women, creating an empowering tribe that is rooting for her to succeed, as much as she is rooting for them to succeed.
In the future, she hopes to create a new self-paced online course that women can follow based on what she teaches through coaching. In this way, she can grow her income, serve more people, without having to spend more time with each individual person, which hopefully leaves her more time for her own self-care. It's definitely a side hustle worth caring about. [Music]
So let's talk about online coaching, or just coaching in general. Based on some estimates, it is as large as a $107 billion industry.
And depending on what you're coaching or consulting on, it often requires no extra qualifications to get started. So if you're an expert, you can start coaching right away. And I believe firmly that everyone's an expert at something. So really what most people have to learn is the business side of coaching. Like how do I actually set this up?
What do people pay for? How do I develop and offer? How do I structure my curriculum or the pathway that I'm kind of taking people down? What are the outcomes they want to see? Who are my ideal clients, et cetera?
Those are the kind of things you have to be thinking about. And as I was preparing to record this, I remember that long ago when I wrote the $100 startup, there was an instant consulting guide that I included in that book, which kind of frames some of those questions for you and helps you kind of figure out, okay, what is it that I can offer? And how will I turn that into an offer? So if you have the $100 startup, you have that instant consulting guide, but if you don't, I'll give you the free PDF. So on the show notes for today, we will actually link up that instant consulting guide, which will hopefully help some of you think this through and perhaps start your own online coaching business.
Remember, if you do, I would love to hear about it. And remember as well, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Those show notes for today are at sidehustleschool.com/244. I'll be back tomorrow. I'm Chris Guillebeau for Sidussle School.
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