In September 2021, I was 27 years old and laid off from my Customer Success Manager position after 4.5 years at a financial technology company. Luckily, I had been working on a side hustle since April 2020.
I started my money coaching business, The Wealthy Wolfe, because I wanted to help underserved populations: daughters of immigrants who were struggling to grow their wealth and were tired of the advice of mostly white, male financial advisors whose mindset I couldn’t understand.
When I lost my job, I felt disposable and had no agency or ownership over my career. I didn’t want to go through that again. I realized there’d never be a better time to go out on my own, so I took the plunge.
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I’m so glad I bet on myself. By the end of 2020, I was making $6,300. And that was just the start. By the end of 2023, I’d be making over $100,000 a year for the second year in a row.
Here are the three steps I took to turn my side hustle into a profitable full-time business.
1. We expanded our online reach
I knew that if I wanted to reach my ideal audience, I needed to meet them where they were. My online presence at the time was a very static Instagram page. Creating video content wasn’t really my forte, so I decided to seek out some help from the experts.
I hired a coach who specializes in marketing and TikTok, and started posting at least two videos per day. Recently, one of my videos went viral in which I talk about the dynamics of lending money to immigrant parents and how it impacts your motivation to save for yourself.
80% of my new 1:1 coaching applications come from leads on TikTok. The remaining 20% come from Instagram, podcast interviews, and writing about my personal experiences with money.
By finding my niche, curating content, and sharing my voice, I’ve been able to build trust with my audience and consistently land new clients. Through Instagram, my email list, and TikTok, I currently reach a community of 44,000 people and that number continues to grow.
2. Diversified income sources
I work with up to 15 clients per month on a 3-month coaching program, with 1:1 coaching making up about 75% of my income, and I have two passive income streams: digital workshops and budget templates.
I’ve signed branding deals with a few financial companies and have started hosting live corporate workshops on personal finance. Branding and corporate work isn’t always consistent, so I don’t rely on it as much as my other sources of income. However, the exposure I get from working with these organizations is definitely beneficial to my business.
Women of color are often overlooked by these large companies when it comes to conversations about money, and I realized this representation gap could translate to lower earning potential for creators like me in this field.
3. They focused on perfecting one service
Initially, I fell into the common side hustle trap of trying to do too much and launching too many programs too quickly.
In 2022, I started offering group coaching after my one-on-one coaching slots were all but sold out. It was confusing for an audience that was just getting to know me and took a lot of work to get started.
Eventually, I got stressed out and we couldn’t even get enough people to fill the program.
I decided to limit my losses and completely removed the group coaching program to focus on one-on-one coaching and make sure I promoted that program consistently throughout the year.
I have heard numerous stories from clients about bad experiences with financial professionals who did not have the cultural context necessary to understand and listen to what they had to say.
So when they meet with me, the first thing I do is customize a plan that takes into account their lived experiences, whether that be budgeting, paying off debt, or creating a script for talking to loved ones about money.
I made $100,000 in revenue last year from one-on-one coaching alone and have worked with over 100 clients since starting my business. This customized approach and ability to focus on developing one signature program has been critical to my long-term side hustle success.
Palwin Mander Founder of Wealthy WolfShe is a South Asian money expert whose mission is to provide honest, empathetic financial coaching through one-on-one coaching and mentoring to women of colour who grew up as immigrants. She is a Canadian Certified Financial Counsellor and a Certified Money Trauma Facilitator.
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