The Uncommon Executive: 2024 Year In Review

What I Learned After A Year Of Coaching, Teaching, Writing, and Running my own business.

A year ago, I decided to transition from my product career into work that has more time flexibility and personal fulfillment. Perhaps inevitably, after exploring a variety of options from venture to advisory, I landed on expanding my career coaching business, a passion project since 2016.

This week’s post is an Annual Review and Look Forward to my first official year of business. I share a behind-the-scenes look into how the business is doing against goals, learnings from my first year as a solo entrepreneur, and some exciting directions for next year.

If you have suggestions or ideas, leave a comment! I’d love to hear it.

Timeline Review

• I incorporated the LLC at the end of November 2023 and told my list of existing coaching clients about my plan to add more coaching slots.

• My first “new” coaching client (I’ve been coaching since 2016) signed in mid-Jan 2024. Since then, I have been 90%+ filled on 1:1 coaching slots every month.

• My book, The Uncommon Executive: Breakthrough to the C-suite as a Minority, was published on January 14, 2024. The process took 4 months and I wrote about it here!

• Published my first post for this newsletter at the end of Feb 2024. Made my first dollar in June from paid subscriptions.

• Ran my first official corporate workshop in mid-March 2024 at Meta. These have led to coaching engagements with multiple tech companies (e.g. OpenAI, Slack, Paypal, Instacart, Hinge, Thumbtack)

• Ran my first workshop for a community-based organization, Women Defining AI, in April 2024. Since then, I’ve done workshops with Women In Product, Chief, Product Leaders Summit, SASE, and more.

• May 2024: I began scaling my coaching work through group coaching and teaching (Reforge, Maven). Since then, I’ve taught 7 cohorts of 130+ students.

• I officially wrapped up my other part-time commitments in early-stage VC and product advisory in June 2024, devoting 100% of my time to coaching and writing!

• In Sept 2024, I created Yue’s Coaching Corner, an invite-only Slack community for women and minority aspiring leaders.

• Ran my first Maven cohort on Mastering Executive Presence & Communication in October 2024, which to my surprise took off and started an entire other exploration into teaching I wasn’t fully planning on.

Company Goal Review

When I started this journey of coaching, I wanted to focus on coaching women and minority aspiring executives. It is an underserved group that I was uniquely positioned to help with my background as an Asian American Female CPO & CTO in Silicon Valley. There is a big gap in expectations, mindset, and skillset from mid-career to senior levels, and there are very few people out there showing the way. It shows in the numbers.

In the latest 2024 Women in the Workplace report from LeanIn, “Women leaders are leaving their companies at the highest rate in years…for every woman at the director level who gets promoted to the next level, two women directors are choosing to leave their company.”

What do ambitious women and minority aspiring leaders need? Role Models.

But not just any role model. Role models who look like them — to help them overcome the additional biases and challenges they face daily:

• having their judgment questioned in their area of expertise. Women leaders are 2x as likely as men leaders to be mistaken for someone more junior.

• having colleagues get credit for their ideas

• not having senior colleagues publicly praise their skills

• being expected to put in substantial time on DEI work and then not have the work recognized.

• facing negativity bias when making mistakes

• finding it more difficult to build strong allies on their teams

…the list goes on.

With the privilege of being in a position where I can step away from a traditional full-time job, I wanted to focus on giving up and helping this underserved group accelerate their careers — to find the path and gain the skillsets needed to get unstuck and grow sustainably. To measure how I was doing, I chose a goal that aligned closely with this mission:

Company North Star Metric: Number of Career Trajectories Accelerated

Unlike my past jobs, financial gain was not the primary objective. However, I needed to be able to support my family through this business. I created a guardrail metric for the business:

Guardrail metric: Revenue

Here’s how I did in 2024:

Takeaways

• The total number of careers accelerated is not very high in absolute. It is capped by the limitation of my time. I only included my coaching clients (1:1 and group) and a discounted course students count. Some of the more high audience count forums — Talks / Workshops, Newsletters, and Book — I found too light on net impact to count in this metric. I am okay with this. Coaching is about depth and consistency over time, not hockey-stick growth.

• Revenue is not directly correlated with the number of careers accelerated. The big bump in the number of careers accelerated is from my Reforge Course in May. The big bump in revenue is from running concurrent team coaching programs. This is okay, particularly since revenue is a guardrail metric.

• Demand for coaching and courses may have some seasonability. I’ve not made it a first full year, but it feels like there’s more demand in the summer months and less in the winter months. I’m excited to see what early 2025 holds since I was just starting in early 2024.

Marketing and Lead Generation

I have three broad marketing channels: Newsletter, Company workshops, and Referrals. As with any marketing channel attribution, it’s difficult to cleanly track where clients come from. Most of them have had multiple touchpoints before converting to an ongoing coaching client.

Quick stats:

• The Uncommon Executive Newsletter: 5000+ subscribers in the last 9 months since inception. I started with a small list of ~100 friends & former clients.

• Workshops: 25+ events reaching 500+ potential clients

• Referrals: 20+ referrals from other coaches and community work

Takeaways:

• The highest converting channel for ongoing clients has been referrals, then workshops.

• My newsletter has been good for building credibility and reputation which has led to self-sponsored clients and corporate engagements, but the effect is difficult to attribute directly.

What I loved and disliked

One of the primary reasons I coach is to prioritize personal fulfillment. Therefore, in every activity I pursue, I also stay close to my intuition and gut on enjoyment and fulfillment levels.

What I loved:

• Coaching conversations. I look forward to each and every one.

• Women In Product Executive Coaching Circles: hands down my favorite group coaching experience of the year.

• Delivering corporate workshops, virtual talks, and being a guest on podcasts (this one surprised me!)

• Writing my weekly newsletters and guest posts (w/Deb Liu, Elena Verna, Ethan Evans, Felix Lee, Akash Gupta, Pawel Huryn, and more to come!)

• Course Q&A. Yes, mostly just the Q&A. I find the teaching part repetitive.

• Connecting with other creators and solo entrepreneurs with similar missions on Substack, Maven, and more.

What I disliked:

• Creating social media posts on LinkedIn and Substack notes

• Creating course content and curriculum

• Cold outreach for corporate work

• Creating marketing emails and messages and remembering to send them

• Following up with non-responsive clients

• Job Search coaching (I offered a 2-session job search package for some time)

Mostly Neutral:

• Tracking financials, invoicing, filing for taxes, incorporation, etc

• Website updates, maintaining subscriber lists, etc

Looking forward to 2025

I am so excited to lean more into the work that I love in 2025. I feel so grateful to have been able to transition coaching into this full-time and make it work financially for my family.

In some ways, it was easier to experiment when there wasn’t “a thing” yet. Now, a year in, there is “a thing” to lose. However, I constantly remind myself that experimentation and taking risks are essential for growth.

Here are some general directions I look to take the business in 2025!

Lean into what is working well

• Expand 1:1 coaching. I will be opening up a few more slots for new clients (Experience A Coaching Call today - Free!). In addition, I am considering a coaching certification, likely from New Ventures West, to continue my own growth. I firmly believe in the integration of all aspects of self when it comes to leadership and career growth.

• Write consistently for this newsletter, The Uncommon Executive. Given it is primarily a top-of-funnel channel, I will be making this newsletter FREE again for all. I think this will be the most effective channel to have some positive impact on more women and minority aspiring executives. If you’ve enjoyed my work, please consider sharing and referring friends!

• More corporate team coaching and team workshops. I did a few of these in 2024 for big-name tech companies in Silicon Valley and will try to grow this channel.

Iterate on new offerings

• The first cohort of my new group coaching program, The Uncommon Executive Leadership Launchpad, will start in January. I am still experimenting with the formats and dynamics of group coaching and teaching, and look forward to doing iterations in 2025.

• I started Yue’s Coaching Corner, a Slack Community of former clients and students in September, but have not spent significant energy here. I will iterate further (and perhaps get help from others who have strengths in this area!)

Running the business

• I need to get better and more consistent in marketing and sales. I need to establish a repeatable system and explore how GenAI might be able to accelerate some of my workflows for writing drafts and repurposing content. Would love to hear any recommendations here!

I am so grateful for all the support I’ve received in my journey this year. Thank you to everyone who graciously volunteered time, energy, and recommendations to support my work and my business. I’ve never before leaned so heavily into my network prior to this year, and it does not disappoint! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

If you’re considering a similar journey, interested in working together, or have a suggestion for me to consider, please drop me a note at yuezhao.coach@gmail.com.

That’s all folks! Happy Thanksgiving and see you next week at 3:14 pm!

Yue