Our Mentorship Business Doubled To $40K/Month Despite Market Challenges [Update]
This is a follow up story for MentorCruise. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published almost 2 years ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
Hey again! We’re still here and kicking, MentorCruise is a coaching marketplace, where we are both helping career professionals turn their knowledge into a marketable coaching business, and also make it possible for mentees to find a perfect mentor with just a few clicks.
Back when we did our original story, we were sitting at $24,000/month. MentorCruise had solid, linear growth and today sits at almost twice that – around $40,000/month.
Our growth is something that can’t be pointed to one specific point in time – it’s a culmination of staying consistent and trying to entice more growth in solid ways.
Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?
The past year was all about optimizing and continuing to invest in things that have previously worked for us. As a result, we’ve grown our SEO by a wide margin, we also went from tinkering with paid ads to continuously investing over $5,000 per month into them with the help of an expert.
We’ve made our product better and nicer to use. To do this, we’ve hired a senior-level designer for a couple of months to help our team. We’re still a small team of 4 but we have worked with various incredibly experienced talents to reach our goal.
One big change we’ve made is leveling up our support team and have started doing live chats on our platform, so customers get more assistance when they need it. This required restructuring the support team but has been very rewarding.
We were also lucky to work with companies like Kickstarter and Rakuten on implementing a coaching scheme in their companies, which was a new experience as well. This has started our gradual transformation from a pure B2C platform to now doing both B2C and B2B.
All this together has driven a gradual month-over-month growth that has resulted in us doubling our business this year. It’s something that can’t be pointed to one specific point in time – it’s a culmination of staying consistent and trying to entice more growth in solid ways.
MentorCruise has been featured in Forbes, on Neil Patel’s blog, and GitLab’s Handbook, just to name a few.
What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?
2023 hasn’t been easy for most businesses, and not for us either. While we had many leads to do company-level mentorships with amazing brands potentially, those leads have mostly dried up as HR budgets got cut first when times got tough. On the bright side, this allowed us to focus on our consumer business, which has grown since then.
We decided to put most of our B2B efforts on ice for a bit. That seems dangerous at first, as our growth could have stagnated.
But MentorCruise is a funny business, and very asynchronous in that way: If the economy is going well, businesses invest in their employees, and our business offering grows. But if the economy doesn’t go well, people need training and education, and our consumer side grows.
Hiring was also tricky; I had to let go and replace two employees on short notice. That was a stressful time, as I had a lot of other things on my plate and travel lined up. Dealing with the pressure during those times was tough, but I’m happy I got out on the other end fine.
Too many entrepreneurs are looking for creative growth hacks and shortcuts trying to grow their businesses. It’s all about breaking down your growth struggles into bite-sized pieces.
What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?
As a first-time founder who previously worked as an engineer, hiring and managing people has been by far the largest challenge I’ve encountered. This year, I was put in front of new challenges in this area. I’ve learned a bit more about what it takes to build a happy team, and also how important it is to let people go gracefully if they no longer fit in your team.
I’ve utilized a few ways to become better as a manager and employer. Firstly, I’ve drawn inspiration from well-known employers like GitLab, Gumroad, and Doist, to build a business people enjoy working for. Employees at MentorCruise receive a coaching budget, and paid time off, we have regular reviews and there’s room to grow.
Secondly, I got mentors of my own through our platform, folks that are a few steps ahead of me, and have hired before and scaled their companies. That's been helpful, to be able to access some past experiences to build my own.
A big win has been going from discovery, and trying out many different marketing schemes, to focusing all our energy on 2-3 core channels. This has given our growth another spurt, as it’s easier to compound growth in channels that are already working for you.
What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?
We want to continue our way up to not only implement coaching for individuals but also at an organizational level. Late last year we launched our executive coaching options. We also launched our team hub, a team billing platform of sorts, that helps managers and HR keep an eye on ongoing mentorships.
I’d like us to stick to similar linear growth levels as we’ve been doing so far. This allows us to build a calm, yet successful business. Given our history of revenue growth, we should be able to get to the magical $83.3k MRR within that time period.
These days, a lot more people are using mentorship and coaching as their superpower. We’ve talked to a few of our mentees who have gained promotions, pay raises, or new job prospects thanks to their mentorship. This makes it an interesting case for teams as well, especially now that the economy is tighter, and there’s more attention being paid to building effective teams.
What’s the best thing you read in the last year?
Creative Selection by Ken Kocienda has been one of my favorite reads this year. It’s all about the inner design processes at Apple in the times of the first iPhone – a huge undertaking.
Designing and building a marketplace sometimes feels a little bit similar to this – there are many stakeholders involved, you can’t spill all the secrets, and it’s hard to test assumptions with everyone involved. A lot of gut feeling and breaking down huge issues into small manageable steps is required.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?
KISS – Keep it Simple (and) Stupid. Too many entrepreneurs are looking for creative growth hacks and shortcuts trying to grow their businesses. Again, it’s all about breaking down your growth struggles into bite-sized pieces.
- Check your retention. If you’re losing customers without end, you need to fix that. Chances are, your product isn’t where it needs to be.
- Check your activation. Are people hesitant to leave their credit cards with you? Is your trial offering not attractive? Try as many options as you can.
- Are you just not getting any traffic? You’re in luck – this is the easy part. Get some keyword research done by an SEO professional, and publish two blog posts each week for those keywords. Build out landing pages where necessary. Invest the rest of your budget into some retargeting and lookalike ads.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
We are on the lookout for a part-time/hourly developer with experience working in Django or React. MentorCruise is fully remote and works asynchronously, so it doesn’t matter where you’re from, just how well you’re doing.
It’s important to us that everyone on the team has excellent writing and communication skills, so when you reach out to [email protected] please send along a piece of writing you’re proud of.
Where can we go to learn more?
Follow me on X or reach out on MentorCruise.
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