Made 10K/month From A Side Gig

[zzzebra]

(I posted the exact post on the forum introduction thread, but wanted to turn this into a progress thread)

Hi forum members! My name is Ryan and I read MJ's fastlane book a while ago and that really gave me the perspective I needed to hustle and make things happen for myself.

I then went out, got a few referrals and initially started generating a few grand a month, and this past month I've just crossed $10K/month in revenue. It's a great journey, but I have a lot of roadblocks ahead to scale up the business.

A little bit about myself:
I'm a software engineer at a popular social media company that looks like a birdy. But I didn't write an app or website that made $10K/month.

I used to play tennis at a highly competitive level, until I figured that I can't make it to the pros. Then I took some time off, went to school to get a degree in Computer Science and graduated in 2013. I worked at a startup for a while, but they never took off.

While I was gearing up for my new job (i took 4 months off), I came across MJ's book and that resonated with me. There's a strong feeling in my heart that I need to go out there and do something about it.

Tennis is something I'm passionate about, and something I've been relatively good at. However, I haven't had a ton of experience coaching people.

I figured out that I have 2 relatively crucial skills that a lot of people in my neighborhood are looking for:

1. Bilingual
2. Good in tennis and good with kids

I checked out on both of those, and started reaching out to parents who'd like their kids to learn tennis and have someone who's bilingual to bridge the cultural and linguistic gap.

And that's how I started my tennis coaching business.

My problems right now:

1. Scale. I only have 3-4 hours a day to coach, and as I get more clients knocking, I simply don't have enough time to cater to all of them. I see that as a bottleneck for me right now. Unless I can hire more people to help...

2. Courts. I live in a place that doesn't have a ton of sunshine, so I need to rent courts every now and then to coach. I'm currently looking for a place to set up shop (maybe rent a piece of land and then build courts on top?), but real estate is really pricey where I live. There's a competitor near my area that's been taking in tons of clients due to their location, but from what I've heard, the coaches there are really terrible with kids and most parents are looking elsewhere. This might be a good opportunity to come in and claim the business around this area. Lucky for me, I live in a really wealthy area where people are willing to pay top dollars for a good coach (hence how I made 10K a month )

I've thought about making youtube videos, ebook and blog but thats not where majority of my target clients are located. I've only worked with kids and a potential revenue stream would be adult lessons too.


If anyone has suggestions on how to scale this up, or has some good real estate connections, please let me know and maybe we can work on something together. Thanks guys!

Thought-Process and Suggestions:

• Scale up by increasing price of each lesson
• Find a niche for coaches on the go. Scale out by increasing number of coaches and area of coverage. Definitely something do-able, but the downside here is it's difficult to keep coaches around when they can find their own customers. Why would they want to work for me and let me take a cut when they can find their own clients.
• Instructional videos for beginners.

UPDATES:

6/15/2017
Just went through a bunch of tennis instructional videos online, and writing down pros and cons of each of them. Identifying common themes, and why some videos resonate better with people.

Going to prepare my video gear and start recording some videos.

Started reaching out to tennis coaches around my area and professional coaches I knew from playing days to see what value can I bring to them.

 

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[The-J]

Scaling this is gonna be tough. How many people in Seattle are both (1) bilingual in your language and (2) good enough to coach tennis and (3) good with kids? My guess is not very many.

Bootcamps and classes are decent ways to bring scale to an otherwise unscalable venture. Start a few bootcamps, get em going, and once you have traction with em jack up your 1 on 1 prices.

Your current idea to bring your expertise to a new business isn't a bad one. You're more Fastlane there and open up scale and time; two things you're missing right now.

But you're competing on a different level now. You're competing against more people in a space that may or may not be crowded (I dont know). Plus, your target market changes from kids having fun to athletes who care about performance over all.

Selling to coaches isn't bad, but most coaches are broke and/or so set in their ways that they wouldn't wanna listen to you. Get past these objections and you can do well.

So I ask: what tasks can you outsource right now? Can you NOT be the person who answered the phone? Can you coach 6-8 hours a day instead of 4?

Can you TRAIN, say, a high school or college tennis player to become a coach of your caliber? Maybe this is where your investment lies.

Can you free up time in other ways?

Can you standardize your teaching? Bootcamps? Classes? Bigger bootcamps and classes?

Lots of ways to go, none of em easy. Good luck.

 

[zzzebra]

Scaling this is gonna be tough. How many people in Seattle are both (1) bilingual in your language and (2) good enough to coach tennis and (3) good with kids? My guess is not very many.

Bootcamps and classes are decent ways to bring scale to an otherwise unscalable venture. Start a few bootcamps, get em going, and once you have traction with em jack up your 1 on 1 prices.

Your current idea to bring your expertise to a new business isn't a bad one. You're more Fastlane there and open up scale and time; two things you're missing right now.

But you're competing on a different level now. You're competing against more people in a space that may or may not be crowded (I dont know). Plus, your target market changes from kids having fun to athletes who care about performance over all.

Selling to coaches isn't bad, but most coaches are broke and/or so set in their ways that they wouldn't wanna listen to you. Get past these objections and you can do well.

So I ask: what tasks can you outsource right now? Can you NOT be the person who answered the phone? Can you coach 6-8 hours a day instead of 4?

Can you TRAIN, say, a high school or college tennis player to become a coach of your caliber? Maybe this is where your investment lies.

Can you free up time in other ways?

Can you standardize your teaching? Bootcamps? Classes? Bigger bootcamps and classes?

Lots of ways to go, none of em easy. Good luck.

Thanks for the phenomenal thoughts -- you've highlighted several things that are on my mind right now as well.

As you mentioned, selling to coaches is tough; they don't make a ton of money and some of the main ways for them to be profitable is to minimize expenses. That's going to be an open option for now, unless I can find ways to make them better/more convenient at what they do. Like a coaching master class of sorts would be a possibility.

Of the tasks that I do myself right now, I'm handling scheduling and taking phone calls. The initial setup time is long, but usually what happens after that is we set up a time and location where we practice on a regular basis. I plan on hiring someone to do the scheduling right now, and that will up some of my time.

Next, the coaching portion is where all my time is tied up. Heading to/from a location to the other takes about 20-30 mins on average, and 1-hour coaching sessions actually take up about 2 hours of my time right now. My classes take no more than 4 people at a time. Arguably, we can up the number of students per class but I don't want to do that because a small, focused group is one of my selling points.

However, having bootcamps is a very likely move. All the outdoor courts are regularly booked, so I'm looking for indoor courts right now to see if anything makes sense.

Thanks for the help so far! Appreciate it

 

[business_man]

My classes take no more than 4 people at a time. Arguably, we can up the number of students per class but I don't want to do that because a small, focused group is one of my selling points.

How about taking an assistant so you can manage more kids at the same time. I don't know much about tennis, but I am quite familiar with sport and atheltics. 2 of you could handle 8 kids now and you will be able to monitor your assistant to make sure he will not lower standarts you set (like you said "good with kids" part is important in this case). If you can pay him something what 2 kids parents pays you, you still will add +2 fees in this model.

Anyway this is just a short term fix, you will not be able to scale like this too much

How much would it cost to build a training ground for yourself? Maybe you dont need to buy a land, just lease it for 10 years, invest some money and have a place of your own, which you can rent out to other coaches as well.

 

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[Michał Kóska]

With online tutorials you will have more leverage & access to bigger audience. Your own training ground should also be a good investment, however, you need to take all costs to consideration. Finding a good coaches could also be a problem- you would need to do a lot of 'hardcore' HR

 

[The-J]

Heading to/from a location to the other takes about 20-30 mins on average, and 1-hour coaching sessions actually take up about 2 hours of my time right now.

Why can't you block a 4-6 hour window at a venue in advance and make people fit into those slots?

However, having bootcamps is a very likely move. All the outdoor courts are regularly booked, so I'm looking for indoor courts right now to see if anything makes sense.

Sounds like you need to book pretty far in advance (basically slap yourself at the end of a waiting list for large bookings). Which is fine, you can promote the bootcamp 6-8 weeks in advance.

To me, it sounds like your bottlenecks at the moment are court space and 'extra' time. You should not be answering the phone and you should answer as few emails as possible.

Court space will not be an easy one to overcome. But you might be able to solve a problem if you book regularly, (far) in advance, and promote the courts for use.

Upping the class sizes can be done IF you can get enough assistant coaches. Ideally, they're people who know enough about the game to check people's form, keep the class focused (this one ain't easy: I used to be an assistant instructor in tae kwon do, helped with the little kids all the way to the adults, learning how to focus a class took some time), and make sure no one gets hurt.

If small class sizes are your selling point, then you could offer it as a premium option while you increase your class size.

I'm just brainstorming here. Who knows what will work. Just gotta try it out