16 Business Coaching Success Stories [2024]
Want to help others unlock their potential and achieve their business goals? Consider starting a business coaching service. Business coaching involves working closely with entrepreneurs, managers, and other business professionals to guide them through challenges, develop strategies, and improve their overall performance.
Whether you specialize in leadership development, productivity, or market strategies, your role will be to provide tailored advice and support. You'll conduct one-on-one sessions, develop customized plans, and hold clients accountable for their progress. This business is grounded in your ability to understand client needs, set clear objectives, and guide them to success.
Demand for skilled business coaches is growing, as more people seek expert guidance to navigate complex business landscapes. With the right approach and dedication, you can build a rewarding career helping others achieve their aspirations while cultivating your expertise and professional network. This idea promises both personal satisfaction and financial gains.
In this list, you'll find real-world business coaching success stories and very profitable examples of starting a business coaching that makes money.
1. iContact ($50M/year)
Ryan Allis co-founded iContact by recognizing a pain point early on through his experiences with digital marketing. His journey began as a young entrepreneur who started various ventures, like a computer consulting business when he was 11 and a web marketing consultancy by 16. While handling web design jobs, he noticed how tedious and inefficient existing email marketing solutions were, especially as most were desktop-based and not user-friendly.
This revelation came to a head when he partnered with Aaron Houghton, whom he met through the Carolina Entrepreneurship Club at UNC. The duo discussed creating a web-based email marketing tool that would simplify email newsletter distribution for small businesses. They validated their idea by offering free services to local businesses, such as Jimmy John's Sandwich Shop, to demonstrate the tool's effectiveness. Learning from initial user feedback and adjusting their approach, they managed to generate recurring revenue and acquire paying customers.
One of their early challenges was managing their resources; they bootstrapped the company, working in frugal conditions without a salary for years. Additionally, an instance of a critical server crash taught them the importance of system reliability and customer trust. Surviving these hurdles with persistent efforts and smart pivoting, they refined their product, proving the business model was not only feasible but scalable. By focusing on getting things right with the product and maintaining a close relationship with initial customers, they learned the importance of real-world validation and adaptability in their startup journey.
How much money it makes: $50M/year
How much did it cost to start: $5K
How many people on the team: 250
Discover how Ryan Allis turned a $4,000 server investment into a $169 million acquisition by Vocus, overcoming technical and financial challenges through strategic pivots in email marketing for small businesses.
2. Alex Albarran & Co. ($6.49M/year)
At 12, Alex Albarran got his start by buying and selling Jordan sneakers, sparking an interest in marketing that led him to sell his car for $5,000 to fund his business. Today, his online marketing and consulting company grosses $541k monthly, emphasizing client-focused, hands-on coaching.
How much money it makes: $6.49M/year
How much did it cost to start: $1K
How many people on the team: 8
Learn how Alex Albarran grew his online marketing and business consulting company to achieve a gross revenue of $541k per month, with 3x revenue growth over 15 months, and a team of 8 members, while helping entrepreneurs close the gap between where they are and where they want to be in their business, life, and wealth.
3. Healthpreneur ($6M/year)
Yuri Elkaim, the founder and CEO of Healthpreneur®, came up with the idea for his business after receiving numerous requests from health professionals in need of business advice. Realizing that there was a lack of business education in the health industry, Elkaim decided to provide coaches and health professionals with the coaching, systems, and processes they needed to build successful online coaching businesses. With their flagship product, the Health Business Accelerator Program, Healthpreneur® has helped their clients generate over $217 million in revenue and aims to transform the health and lives of 1 billion people worldwide.
How much money it makes: $6M/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
How many people on the team: 20
Healthpreneur® founder Yuri Elkaim's coaching company has helped naturopaths, functional medicine doctors, dietitians/nutritionists, therapists, online fitness coaches, and health, life, and relationship coaches through transformational coaching paired with predictable systems, frameworks, and processes, generating $217 million for their clients.
4. Pricing I/O ($3M/year)
Marcos Rivera, the founder of Pricing I/O, came up with the idea for his business after realizing that pricing was considered a black art to many B2B SaaS leaders. With his deep experience in building and growing software products, as well as his expertise in pricing and packaging from his time at Vista Equity Partners, Marcos decided to help software companies shift pricing from guesswork to a framework. Despite the risks involved, Marcos took the leap and started Pricing I/O, quickly signing his first client within a week of launching. Since then, the company has experienced significant growth, attracting and retaining customers through a community-focused approach, an authority position on pricing, and bite-sized content that resonates with their target audience.
How much money it makes: $3M/year
How much did it cost to start: $5K
How many people on the team: 9
Pricing I/O, a pricing consultancy for B2B software companies, doubled their team size and tripled revenue in only their second year in business, helping 106 SaaS companies all during a pandemic without any marketing spend.
5. COO Alliance ($2.5M/year)
Cameron grew up in an entrepreneurial family and learned early on to embrace business. His passion for entrepreneurship, coupled with his personal challenges like severe ADD, led him to carve his path by building companies rather than fitting into conventional educational molds. As COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, he experienced firsthand how crucial the COO role is for a company's success and execution of the CEO's vision.
I launched the COO Alliance because I recognized the critical role that the chief operating officer (COO) position plays for the chief executive officer (CEO). A COO will produce a powerful and positive impact on your business. [Cameron Herold]
After leaving 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and receiving feedback from others needing similar operational leadership, Cameron recognized a gap in support networks for COOs. He observed that while CEOs had various peer groups, COOs lacked a dedicated space to collaborate and grow. To validate his idea, he spoke with many industry professionals and saw a consistent need for such a platform.
From these experiences and initial validations, Cameron conceptualized the COO Alliance. Since its inception, he has refined the idea through member feedback and ongoing observations in the business environment. This purposeful approach allowed him to create a valuable resource tailored specifically for second-in-command leaders.
How much money it makes: $2.5M/year
6. Natasha Zoryk ($1.34M/year)
Natasha Zoryk transformed a favor for a friend's website into a six-figure digital marketing agency within six months, pivoting to a business mentorship role in 2020 and now generating close to $2 million annually.
How much money it makes: $1.34M/year
How much did it cost to start: $119
How many people on the team: 9
Learn about the journey of Natasha Zoryk, a 3x founder and business mentor who currently generates close to $2 million per year and over 6 figures in cash per month, as she shares her entrepreneurial story and tips for building a successful business.
7. Jennifer Dawn Coaching ($1.2M/year)
Jennifer Dawn, the founder of Jennifer Dawn Coaching, came up with the idea for her business after being burned by marketing companies in her own business and seeing it happen to her clients as well. She decided to vet out quality and reliable marketing professionals who know what they are doing and do the work. This led her to start her own coaching practice, digital marketing agency, and create the Best Planner Ever to support business owners in their growth journey.
How much money it makes: $1.2M/year
How much did it cost to start: $10K
How many people on the team: 10
Jennifer Dawn, founder of Jennifer Dawn Coaching, grew her business from $50k to seven figures by expanding her offering to include a digital marketing agency, coaching academy and Best Planner Ever product, with a focus on customer retention through the use of digital marketing and a personalised service.
8. 10k Customers ($720K/year)
After walking away from her previous company, Lucy wanted the capital to fund another venture, which led to freelancing, and then consulting her skills that she had learned in the past. From there on, Lucy had begun building her program.
How much money it makes: $720K/year
How much did it cost to start: $500
How many people on the team: 0
10k Customers CEO Lucy Bloomfield shares her process of building profitable, leveraged product companies and turning their focus to helping non-product-based companies build self-liquidating front-ends, resulting in $1 million in revenue through phone sales and 17.5% net profit in the previous year.
9. Project 9 Life ($480K/year)
After losing 100 lbs and turning his life around, Todd was inspired by his own journey and the low success rates of typical resolutions. He founded Project9LIFE, a coaching program now generating $40k/month, to help others achieve lasting lifestyle changes.
How much money it makes: $480K/year
How much did it cost to start: $40K
How many people on the team: 1
This case study is about Todd, a former athlete who transformed his own life by becoming active and losing weight, inspiring him to start Project9LIFE, an 8-week group coaching program that focuses on mindset and helping professionals aged 35-55 make progress in their lives, currently making about $40k/m on his way to $500k/m+.
10. MentorCruise ($480K/year)
Dominic Monn came up with the idea for MentorCruise while facing the challenge of finding a mentor during his own career development. He realized that mentorship was a major problem for many professionals, so he built a coaching marketplace where career professionals could turn their knowledge into a marketable coaching business and mentees could easily find a mentor. Despite the challenges of building the platform while balancing his studies and a full-time job, MentorCruise now makes around $24,000 per month in commissions and processes over $120,000 every month for its mentors.
How much money it makes: $480K/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
How many people on the team: 5
MentorCruise is a career coaching marketplace generating $24k MRR and processing $1M annually for mentors, with most traffic and sales coming from SEO and organic sources, currently looking to expand to the B2B market.
11. Fearless Business ($300K/year)
Robin Waite transitioned from running a small marketing agency to founding Fearless Business, a coaching accelerator, after selling his agency for £90k. He leveraged his experience and extensive networking, conducting 125 consultations in his first year, to build a thriving, six-figure coaching business with over 150 international members.
How much money it makes: $300K/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
How many people on the team: 0
This case study article is about Robin, a business coach and founder of Fearless Business, a business coaching accelerator for coaches, consultants, and freelancers. Through the accelerator, Robin helps one-person businesses productize their offers, raise prices, and improve sales processes, with clients typically seeing results within the first three months, including pitching their new products to 10-20 prospective clients and achieving their financial goals.
12. Prosmartrepreneur ($114K/year)
Sayan Neogie, an engineering student, started his personal finance and entrepreneurship blog in 2018, initially as a way to make money on the side. After reading an article about a blogger who made over $100,000 per month, Sayan jumped into blogging without hesitation. Fast forward to 2021, his blog now attracts over 160,000 monthly readers and generates a full-time income, proving that blogging can be a profitable venture with minimal investment.
How much money it makes: $114K/year
How much did it cost to start: $4
How many people on the team: 0
This case study is about a college student who started a personal finance & entrepreneurship blog and now makes $9.5k a month with over 160k monthly visitors, showcasing how blogging can be a profitable business model with little investment and high potential for growth.
13. Emerging Humanity ($60K/year)
Christos Kritikos, the founder of Emerging Humanity, came up with the idea for his business through his extensive experience as a technology solutions consultant for small businesses. With a passion for humanity and society, he realized that there was a need for a better way to support and empower entrepreneurs. Through structured programs, educational content, and hands-on help, Emerging Humanity aims to help impact-driven entrepreneurs launch successful products and become fundable.
How much money it makes: $60K/year
How much did it cost to start: $30K
How many people on the team: 0
Emerging Humanity offers accelerator programs, entrepreneur courses, startup tools, and hands-on services that help impact-driven entrepreneurs launch successful products and become fundable, having helped over 50 founders/entrepreneurs from developing parts of the world within the past three to four years.
14. Sarah Stewart ($54K/year)
Sarah Stewart transitioned from a 14-year corporate career in the pharmaceutical industry to become a time management coach after a "lightbulb moment" on a Zoom call. Leveraging her project management skills and lived experiences, Sarah's business has served 121 customers and generated $150,000 in lifetime revenue.
How much money it makes: $54K/year
How much did it cost to start: $2K
How many people on the team: 0
A time management coach and project management consultant shares how she transitioned from a corporate career to self-employment, built a successful coaching business, and launched a transformative program that has received rave reviews and changed lives.
15. Rooted Drawers ($48K/year)
Shelby realized her knack for reselling when she sold a bridesmaid dress on Poshmark and saw its potential. Now, with $4,000/month in revenue, she and her husband manage multi-platform sales and coach others, proving that persistence pays off.
How much money it makes: $48K/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
How many people on the team: 1
Reselling business that has grown into a full-time venture, generating around $4,000/month, by cross-listing products on multiple platforms, primarily focusing on fashion but also including hard goods and furniture, while also offering downsizing services and planning to launch a website about the work-from-home lifestyle.
16. Commissioning and Startup ($42K/year)
Paul Turner, a professional electrical engineer and project management professional, came up with the idea for his business, Commissioning and Startup, after seeing numerous projects struggle due to poor commissioning. He created a suite of training programs to teach project managers and engineers the structured process of commissioning complex projects. These programs have been well received, with over 10,000 people taking the free intro course and positive feedback circulating on social media.
How much money it makes: $42K/year
How much did it cost to start: $5K
How many people on the team: 1
Learn how one professional engineer created online commissioning training programs to help project managers and engineers deliver complex projects on time and budget, with over 10,000 people taking his free mini-course and growing interest in his courses.
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
