On becoming a career coach, resume and LinkedIn expert while raising kids in Madagascar
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Alison RakotoFrom Boulder, ColoradoCoach, Life Work Purpose at alisonrakoto.com
Business Model: Freelance$6,500monthly revenue$5,500monthly profitAll info self-reported by intervieweePublished January 9, 2020Reviewed and edited by Rita Epps
Who are you and how do you make money online?
My name is Alison, I am a human potential coach with a background in applied positive psychology and career coaching. For the last year, I’ve also been studying life coaching to increase my capacity to support my clients to achieve success.
As a coach, I offer career, executive, and human-potential coaching to empower smart, hardworking individuals, to achieve their dreams with confidence, joy, and grit.
I do this by leveraging my passion for human potential, my knowledge of positive psychology, my strengths as a career coach, and my own experience as a working mom, former executive, expat, and business owner.
My primary focus is women aged 30 to 45 and in particular mothers.
However, I also work with single women, women with no kids, and men who have similar goals/challenges to some of my female clients, such as being immigrants/expats/fathers and/or seeking out a pivot career due to a desire to connect their work to something bigger.
My primary revenue source is the career and executive coaching and resume writing/LinkedIn strategy.
For the last year, I’ve been transitioning my revenue model to the one that is more reliant on coaching, and moving away from the resume writing (and LinkedIn profile writing), except as part of my coaching service.
I am slowly working to build passive income streams, but I’ve not adequately leveraged this yet in my business.
What makes me unique is that I’ve managed to:
create my business while raising two kids – with one of whom I was on bed rest for the entire pregnancy;being a military spouse – whose husband was deployed for 8 months out of 12 until 2018;going to school online and remote;learning to work with and manage PTSD as a coach (supporting my husband);and all the while building my expertise as a career coach.
Over the last two years, I’ve invested about $12,000 in my education, obtaining an Applied Positive Psychology Certificate from the Flourishing Center in New York and then studying coaching through the International Coach Academy.
I’ve now paid for all my studies and I’ve started to also work with two coaching groups (HireClub & Collective Gain), in addition to my private coaching practice.
As an independent worker, my revenue varies.
But in general, I make about $2,500+ per month on my resume packages and about $2,000+ per month on individual coaching sessions.
I get periodic bumps to my revenue through small group coaching, special events or consulting contracts.
We also rent out our house in France for $1,300/month, and we make about $1,200 in Airbnb revenues through two bungalows we own in Madagascar (where we currently live).
For my current fiscal year, this means that I am averaging about $6,500/month in 2019.
And I’m on track to increase my revenue by another 30% in 2020 – by offering a twice a year blended group and private coaching program.
Start-up costs and educational fees have made for high expenses in the past.
However, I recently made my final payment for my continuing education, so now my expenses will consist of things like:
Web hostingActiveCampaignLinkedIn PremiumAndCoG SuiteGoogle Fi (referral code link for $20 off)and a few other memberships.
In total, this is an average of $450/month.
Previously, my monthly expenses were about $1,000 because they included $510 for my coaching program.
