From 0 to 263 clients: what I learned in one year of coaching
Ditch the earn-more, spend-more trap
This newsletter helps ambitious professionals take control of their money and build real financial freedom without stress, jargon or overwhelm.
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One year ago, freshly resigned from Salesforce and sitting on garden leave, I had no idea if anyone would actually pay for financial coaching.
But I was about to find out in the most dramatic way possible.
On 31st August 2023, I’d just qualified as a financial adviser.
Up to that point, the only people I’d ever helped with money were my colleagues in presentations and 1:1 coaching sessions.
I was excited, nervous, and had way too much time on my hands.
So I decided: why not just start now?
I put out an offer to my 145 newsletter subscribers: one hour of money coaching for €100, all donated to charity.
I hit send, hoping maybe one or two people would say yes so I could get some practice.
Instead, about 60 people booked in that first month.
That’s when I realised: bloody hell, there’s something here.
Fast forward a year later, I’ve now coached 263 people and spoken with hundreds more.
Here’s what completely surprised me:
It’s infinitely more rewarding than selling any software package
Helping someone find €17,000 in tax refunds or finally sleep peacefully about money beats hitting any quota.
Watching a couple stop fighting about expenses and start building wealth together? That’s amazing.
Social media is brutal (but necessary)
LinkedIn built my entire pipeline, but it’s unpredictable as Irish weather.
Posts flop for no reason, algorithms change overnight, and negative comments hit harder than they should. Yet it remains the best way to reach people at scale.
The trick?
Don’t tie your self-worth to likes and shares (easier said than done).
Everyone’s situation is different, but also exactly the same
Whether you earn €50k or €500k, the core problems never change:
- Spending too much
- Not investing enough
- Not giving it enough time to grow
- Not earning enough
It is so much easier for someone else to show you exactly what's holding you back.
Success patterns repeat across career stages
Juniors: Not earning enough yet, but can build the right habits early (the lucky ones who find me at 25 will be millionaires by 40).
Mid-levels: Have decent assets but miss huge optimisation opportunities with pensions, taxes, and lifestyle creep.
Senior leaders: All want to know the same thing: “How long until I can walk away?” (And walking away doesn’t mean retiring to a beach. It means doing work on their own terms.)
Nobody actually knows their real numbers
This one shocked me most. Very few people know what they truly earn after tax, how much they spend, save, invest, or even their net worth.
I had an enterprise AE earning €160,000 who thought he was “doing well” until we discovered he was spending €190,000k. No wonder he felt skint.
Once you see the real numbers, the fog lifts.
It’s like switching the lights on in a dark room.
Everything becomes obvious.
One-on-one coaching has limits I didn’t expect
My time is finite. Back-to-back calls left me drained. I had to learn boundaries the hard way.
I had to reserve time in my calendar for breaks so that I could give it all during my calls.
The economics are more brutal than anyone admits
Here’s the maths nobody talks about:
If I charge €1,000, lose €200 to VAT, another €400 to income tax.
I'm left with €400 for work that transforms someone’s entire financial future.
Clients pay a premium for transformation, but the numbers make one-on-one coaching tough to scale without pricing out the people who need it most.
This is why coaches have to charge what they do.
Bad advice and unnecessary complexity cost people the most
So many brilliant people have been sold high-fee products that benefit advisers, not clients. I’ve seen pension funds charging 2% annual fees. Investment plans that don't perform while the market is on a tear. It’s daylight robbery.
The truth?
You can own the entire global stock market through one low-fee fund.
Takes 10 minutes to set up, 10 minutes a month to maintain. Simplicity destroys complexity every time.
The most fulfilling wins aren’t about the money
Some of the most memorable moments are not about the amounts. It's the stressed out AE who finds out he is already a millionaire.
The Account Director in his late 50s who finds out he's already financially independent.
And the many couples who are finally getting on the same page financially and able to row in the same direction.
This is just the beginning
263 people coached is significant, but I’ve spoken with 100s more. And those conversations opened my eyes to something bigger : thousands of smart professionals stuck in the same patterns, making the same expensive mistakes.
Yesterday I did my last intro call for a while my friend.
Not because I’m stepping back, but because I’m stepping up.
I’m building something that can deliver these same transformations to hundreds of people at once, not just one at a time.
The goal? Make financial freedom as accessible as the problems that keep people from it.
I will share the first invites this week with my waitlist.
If you’d like to be first to hear about it, join the waitlist here:
That's it for this week. Thankfully I only have a 16km run to do today. Those long runs on Saturdays are killing me.
Wishing you a lovely weekend,
To your financial freedom
Sjoerd
P.S.
We had a great session for 100 BDRs in Salesforce on Thursday.
If you want me to do the same for your team, hit reply on this email and let's make it happen
