In this candid monologue, the speaker, a coach who has generated $1.7 million in revenue from his online coaching business, explains that a single skill gap—low risk tolerance—prevented him from scaling to a potential $10 million. He shares three personal stories that illustrate how fear of financial risk cost him: (1) refusing to spend $5 K on a mentor despite having $100 K in cash and investments; (2) delaying the hiring of his first team member, resulting in lost revenue; and (3) under‑spending on advertising even after finally increasing the ad budget. He argues that the ability to take calculated risks—whether hiring mentors, building a team, or investing in ads—is the common denominator behind his most successful clients, who have grown from $0 to $85 K per month in under a year. The speaker’s purpose is to highlight risk tolerance as a learnable skill, urging other coaches to cultivate it to avoid similar financial losses and accelerate growth.
Chapters
So look, we've done about $1.7 million inside of our coaching business. And it could have been a lot more if I didn't have this one skill gap. Like with the money that we're making now, it could have been $10 million. And I want to share this skill gap with you in the hopes that you lose a lot less money than I did. And also for the record, just so you know, I'm not playing. When I think about our most successful clients, like clients who've gone from $0 a month with their coaching business to making $85,000 a month with their coaching business in less than a year, they had this skill. So what the heck is this skill? I'm gonna tell a couple stories because I want this to sink in for you because this can show up in very sneaky ways and you don't realize it's the same thing you need to cultivate. Story number 1, in 2019, this is before my coaching business, this is, I went full-time in 2020, 2019, I still didn't have it figured out. Basically still a broke coach waiting tables to pay bills. Now, and I say broke, meaning like I wasn't making a lot of money with my coaching business. I was making like $1,000 a month, but I was very good with my money. And so I had about $100,000 saved up, I think $40,000 of which was in the stock market. But here's the crazy part. Even though I had been trying for friggin', like what, 4 years to figure things out, I was so scared to invest in a mentor to help me. There was a mindset and business coach I had my eyes on, and she told me that her offer was $5,000. I thought she was batshit crazy. And although I had literally like $100,000 in like cash and investments, I wouldn't invest $5K in that. That's story number one. We're gonna get to what this is in a minute. Story number two, it took me so long, honestly embarrassingly long, inside my coaching business to to hire my first team member. We lost a lot of money from that. Like, when I look back, I just cringe. We lost so much. Story number 3: even if I look back in this past year, yes, I spent more money than I ever have on ads. But when I look back at the past year, I actually just think to myself, like, why the fuck didn't you spend more money on ads? Like, honestly. Now, what do all these things have in common? The ability to take risk. It doesn't matter if it's the risk of hiring a mentor, it's the risk of hiring a team member, or it's the risk of spending more money on ads. It's all the same thing. It's all you being able to raise your risk tolerance. And I can tell you that my risk tolerance when I started this was very, very, very low. And it's grown over time. How? Because I've learned to take more risks. I'm getting more risk tolerant by doing, and it's a skill that you have to master. It cost me a lot of money not mastering this. And I can tell you that the clients I have who print cash at a crazy rate, they learned how to take these risks. They learned how to hire people, mentors, and spend way more on ads.
