Making $30k+/mo as a business coach after a high-speed meltdown

A few years back, Robin Waite burned out and sold his marketing agency. In hindsight, he says he shouldn't have sold it, but he used that modest nest egg to get started with a new career — business coaching.

Now, Fearless Business is bringing in $25k-$30k/mo.

Here's Robin with some sage advice and the story of how he did it. 👇

High-speed meltdown

I’d just been down a hill at 52.5 mph on my pushbike and broken down in tears at the bottom of the hill. Things weren’t right. I was sitting by a railway line doing some post-breakdown contemplation.

My wife was expecting our second daughter to arrive. And my local marketing agency had 150 clients clamoring for our attention and a small, slightly dysfunctional, team of 4 employees. We were working lots of late nights to get projects over the line, and I’d exhausted myself and my motivation.

As I sat there, the only way out seemed to be to close the agency down. I returned home to my heavily pregnant wife and announced that I was going to shut it down the following Monday.

Instead, I sold it for a modest sum. Thankfully, my first book, Online Business Startup, started selling well and I got inquiries from other agency owners about doing some consulting and informal mentoring work with them, showing them how to build and sell their agencies. There’s not a lot I won’t do for free coffee and cake, so I helped build and sell their agencies. And I absolutely loved it.

Mistakes were made

I made two mistakes when selling my agency. First was signing the contracts and not doing due diligence over one vital bit of paperwork. It centered around a small loan I’d taken out to help build some software for our clients.

When the business transferred I wasn’t able to confirm with the loan company that the debenture had been signed by the purchaser due to data protection rules at the time. It turned out they hadn’t and they stopped making payments. Due to me still being the named guarantor for the loan the responsibility fell on me to repay it.

With any acquisition, use lawyers and double and triple check every tiny detail. I missed it because I was in a hurry to get out, and it cost me. Thankfully, it was an amount I recovered from quite quickly. But a valuable lesson nonetheless.

Second, if I knew what I know about business now, I wouldn’t have sold the business. Instead I’d have hired a managing director to run the business day-to-day and build out passive income from it whilst growing my coaching business.

Don’t be in a hurry to exit your business or take investment. There’s a chance you can do more with it on your own.

Building five revenue streams

In 2017, I founded Fearless Business, which is a business coaching platform that provides accountability for coaches, consultants, and freelancers through our internal eLearning platform (CourseApp), coaching calls, community, and associate coaches.

At the time, I had some money from the sale, but not enough to last me long term, so I raced through the gears charging for coaching and accountability. Paying attention to what other coaches and experts were doing, I quickly learned to speak from the stage, wrote two more books, and guested on dozens of podcasts.

Thanks to that quick pivot, I’ve personally made at least £100k every year (bar one) since changing my career, hitting £200k+ in both 2020 and again in 2024.

During the average month, Fearless Business brings in between £20k-£25k per month now which is great for a small but mighty business coaching practice. During 2025 I anticipate this growing to £25-30k per month.

Here's a breakdown of our revenue streams:

1. The Fearless Business Accelerator: Currently £4,500 for lifetime access, but this will be going up in 2025. Typically this brings in £175k per year.

2. Personal 1-2-1 Business Coaching: I only work with 5-6 clients per year charging £10k for 6 months of coaching (plus they get lifetime access to the Accelerator). This brings in £50-£60k per year.

3. Associate Coaching: Providing coaching on other people’s coaching programs. Currently, this sits at about £2k per month

4. Sponsorships/Partnerships: Because of my personal brand, we’ve added a 3rd revenue stream where people can be featured on my personal website. These sponsorships typically bring in £6k-£8k per month. We are bringing new websites online now to take more partnerships and diversify this income stream over the next 12-15 months.

5. Interest income, books, and other income - These are my first 2 streams of income that are passive. They total about £1k per month right now.

I built all of this with the following tech stack: ScoreApp, PipeDrive, Acuity Scheduling (now part of SquareSpace), EmailOctopus, PodMatch, CourseApp, and WebFlow.

Raising prices

People pay for the Accelerator in a slightly unusual way. It's a £900 enrollment fee and then they get to pay an installment plan (6, 12 or 18 months) depending on what they feel they can afford. This hugely reduces friction for those who want to join and it means we can focus on ROI sooner with clients.

About 35% of our clients choose to voluntarily clear their balance early because they are so happy with the results. And 3-4 clients join the group on average every month. Which means we get a little cash up front but then have a nice steady stream of recurring income from the installment plans.

Prior to that I’d tested a lower ticket membership which was just impossible to grow. We maxed out at about 30 members paying £97/mo. My issue with monthly memberships like this is that you introduce 12 points of “failure” throughout the year.

When I launched it in Jan 2019 we started at £997, and then over time I’ve increased the fee incrementally until we got to £4.5k, and we’ve seen similar sign-up numbers year-on-year despite the increases in price.

Books as a growth lever

The most successful marketing campaign I’ve used to date involved guesting on Ali Abdaal’s Deep Dive podcast. Ali is a YouTuber with 6M subscribers. He's best known for talking about productivity.

The interview garnered 275k views and generated over 3,000 leads for my business. The reason it was so successful as a marketing tool was that I gave away one of my books (Take Your Shot) at the end of the interview. This resulted in me shipping 700+ physical copies of my book to all four corners of the globe in the first 90 days alone and generating £200k in sales for my humble little coaching business.

A major part of my marketing revolves around giving books away. I have a goal to give away 3,000 physical copies of my books every year.

I mainly do this via podcasts now, but my other two routes are from speaking at events and sponsoring events if they won't book me to speak. I always bring enough books for all attendees.

For example, I’m speaking at Atomicon in June 2025, which is one of the largest sales and marketing conferences in Europe. I’ll be speaking alongside Seth Godin, Fearn Cotton and Geoff Rahm, which is pretty cool. Even more cool though, I’ll get to distribute 1,500 copies of my new book to the delegates attending!

Early growth via events

Prior to that though, what did I do?

I remember a prospective client came into my small office and said, “Robin, I think I’m a better coach than you, but I don’t understand why you’re so much more successful than me!”

I asked her how many consultations with prospective clients she had undertaken and she started counting on one hand: 4-5 in the past year.

In my first year alone, I spoke at 48 events, hosted 12 of my own networking events to 800+ people, delivered 125 consultations, and also guested on 30+ podcasts. This resulted in 44 news clients and my first 6-figure year.

More recently, I’ve switched to running Webinars (via Zoom) so people can experience group coaching which has worked very well. When the enquiry comes in, I send a short personalized Loom video inviting the prospect onto the webinar. And then, I offer a follow-up call after the webinar.

The numbers were great at my most recent webinar:

• 19 enquiries

• 17 bookings for the webinar

• 13 attended the webinar

• 6 booked a follow up call

• 4 joined the accelerator

• Which produced £18k in revenue

That just goes to show that you don’t need big numbers of warm leads to generate a good volume of sales.

And don't forget to get video testimonials and write case studies. Video testimonials, in particular, are powerful.

Business tips from a business coach

Brute force it

It has to be said that if you’re lazy your business will never grow.

The caveat to that is if you’re lazy but smart…it might!

However, I’ve learned to brute force the success of my businesses by setting big hairy audacious goals. Getting 1,000 reviews for my books, doing 100 podcast interviews, writing 1,000 blog articles, publishing 100 podcasts, etc. etc.

I’m not an advocate for the hustle culture which is rife these days, though. It’s more about doubling down on the things that are working and setting some goals around them.

Sometimes, being stubborn is your best asset as an entrepreneur. I will never give up. I love what I get to do every day helping people grow their businesses. I will make this a success come hell or high water.

Follow your whims

If you have a burning desire to do something in your business, then do it. 

My most successful ideas have come on a whim on a Saturday morning when I’ve downed tools and given myself a moment of peace to think. I now don’t work on Fridays, as a rule, because this thinking time is so important to allow creative ideas time to percolate.

In fact Jeff Cunningham talks about this in his book The Road Less Stupid. The average amount of time the FTSE 100 CEOs spend on “Thinking Time” is 2.5 days per week.

Don't build first

Whatever you do, DON’T build the product first. I’ve seen so many people spend months, even years building the product and perfecting it before launching it… to the sound of crickets!

Build a waitlist of people who you’ve pitched the idea to and only when it reaches a certain volume of people will you then build the product and launch it.

Because if you can’t stimulate enough demand for the product on a waitlist which is FREE, how do you expect to stimulate demand for a paid product or service?

Have a plan

Have at least a bit of a plan.

If you want to make $100k next year, and you sell your widgets for $1,000, then you need to sell 100 widgets next year. That’s 2 per week. How many leads do you need to get in order to sell one widget? What’s your conversion rate? What’s your profit margin? Etc.

Just a very basic plan for your business is essential.

Charge more

There is an inflection point in every business where they finally get pricing.

The inflection point looks like this, “Struggle…struggle…struggle…oh! That was easy!”

Don’t charge what you think people will pay, charged based on

1. The bare economics of what your business needs

2. The outcomes your clients will get when they work with you

Focus on cashflow

Being the most expensive in the market is the most sustainable business model I know. Charge more than your competition.

Instead of focusing on more clients, focus on profitability and, more importantly, creating positive cash flow in your business. Believe it or not, this could mean FEWER clients, not more. And needing fewer clients generally means less time marketing and more time doing the thing you love doing.

Be stubborn

One thing that has certainly helped me get through the tough times is being pigheaded and stubborn. If people knew what entrepreneurship is really like they would be mad to sign up for it!

I have a belief that my business is going to succeed no matter what. And I love what I do so much that I do it whether I get paid or not…because I GET to do it.

Keep learning

Investing in coaches, mentors, masterminds, conferences and workshops is so important.

If you can’t afford to hire a coach, spend time listening to podcast interviews and following influential people on YouTube. Meet a friend who runs a business for coffee once a week and share ideas.

I’ve dedicated myself to lifelong learning and it has paid me back in dividends.

Remember it's not linear

Don’t expect linear growth. You can build sustainable, recurring revenue in your business through subscriptions, memberships, and care plans. However, clients are like buses; none come along for ages and then three come along at once.

No matter how good your marketing is, or how well you plan, when clients choose to enroll is unpredictable. To overcome this, build up a rainy-day fund.

Six months of operating expenses so that if the worst case happens and you don’t enroll a single client for six months you can survive while you pivot (if you need to). It’s just the nature of business.

Resource: Built to sell

There is a special place on my shelves for a book called Built to Sell by John Warrilow. It's a fictional story about Alex who runs the Stepleton Agency. He wants to sell it but his mentor tells him it’s worthless, and then you join the main character on his journey to turn the business around.

It was the first time I was introduced to the notion of productizing services. And it led me to the inception of my 1-Day Branding Workshop, which is ultimately why someone bought my agency — for the intellectual property behind the workshops.

Shoutout to parentrepreneurs

It has to be said that parents are at a slight disadvantage when it comes to running a business, I lose a lot of time to childcare, which I don’t begrudge in the slightest. So I think it’s important to remind any parentrepreneurs out there that it is an unfair playing field and to stick at it.

I understand how tough it can be, so please be kind to yourself. You are making a difference.

What's next

In 2025, I’ve chosen to consolidate my business and aim for slight growth at £300k revenue. A health scare this summer brought life very much into focus and, for me now, it’s about finding joy in my work and being closer to my family. £300k affords me a very nice lifestyle without being detrimental to my health.

I’ve got 2 books in the pipeline for 2025 as well. One on pricing, which is almost drafted and will be ready to send to my publisher in the spring. And the other one, I’ve set a deadline to have it ready for Atomicon in June for a big launch.

You can follow along on YouTube, X, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and my personal website.

And you can get a FREE signed copy of Take Your Shot!