By Teresa Torres · producttalk.org · @ttorres on X · LinkedIn
Teresa Torres reviews how her coaching business has changed and lays out her plans for 2022. She explains that her main goal is to get more product trios adopting continuous discovery, but that this impact is hard to measure directly, so she tracks business and product outcomes instead. She argues that one-on-one coaching is capped by her own time, pushing her toward online courses, a community membership, and her book, which scale impact rather than just revenue. The piece matters to product leaders because it shows how a practitioner reasons about the trade-off between price, capacity, and reach, and why she avoids raising prices as a substitute for impact.
01Key takeaways
- Separate the impact you want from the outcomes you can measure, and pick actionable business and product outcomes to track.
- When your service is capped by your own time, a price increase grows revenue without growing reach, so look for formats that scale.
- Asynchronous, cohort-based courses with applied practice can reach far more people than workshops, which often fade once participants return to work.
- Pricing tiers, such as a cheaper book or membership, can widen access to people in lower-income markets.
- Community and peer learning amplify coaching by letting many voices answer each other's questions.
02Key sections
- Impact vs. outcomes
- Torres separates the hard-to-measure impact she wants from the business and product outcomes she can actually track. Business outcomes come from the business model, while product outcomes are leading indicators of them.
- Why coaching doesn't scale
- Her coaching model is limited by how many teams she can work with at once, so the only lever left was raising prices, which increases revenue but not impact.
- Courses unlock scale
- Online courses let her serve many more students at once, and she argues they are a better format than workshops because learning is spread over time and students can apply lessons with support.
- Community, book, and affordability
- A low-cost membership community and a cheaply priced book extend reach to people who cannot afford coaching, and she deliberately resists price increases that would exclude them.
- How to engage
- She closes with a practical path for readers: start with the book, join the community, take a course, go deeper with coaching, and spread the word.
03From the post
“Happy New Year! I’m excited for 2022. Every December, I take several weeks to reflect on the ending year and to look forward to the year ahead. For the past few years, I’ve shared my reflection and plans in the first post of the year. This year is”
04Frameworks mentioned
Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.