You have a compelling but invisible business. Fifteen years at Stripe and Airbnb, five satisfied clients from referrals alone, and zero online presence. The good news: your credentials are genuinely differentiated in a market where most coaches have generic corporate backgrounds. The bad news: you're competing against coaches who've spent years building audiences while you've been heads-down delivering.

Your $8K/6-month program is priced appropriately for the market—executive coaching rates range from $200-800/hour, and your program works out to roughly $330/hour assuming bi-weekly sessions. But price isn't your problem. Discovery is. Tech managers actively searching for help with the manager-to-director transition are finding Lara Hogan (13K monthly organic visitors), Reboot.io (3K monthly), and the coaches listed on Gergely Orosz's Pragmatic Engineer blog. You're not in the consideration set because you don't exist online.

The strategy here isn't to out-content people who've been writing for years. It's to leverage what you have—specific, credible stories from scaling engineering at two of tech's most respected companies—and get those stories in front of the right 500 people, not the right 50,000. You need 6-8 new clients per year to hit $100K. That's a relationship-building problem, not a viral content problem.

Tier 1: Large Coaching Organizations

Tier 2: Solo Coaches with Established Audiences

Tier 3: Marketplaces and Platforms

Channel explanations:

LinkedIn (Priority 1): Your buyers are there. Engineering managers at director-track companies have LinkedIn profiles and check them. The algorithm currently favors personal content from real practitioners. Your Stripe/Airbnb stories have built-in engagement hooks. You don't need to go viral—you need 500 right people to see you.

Website (Priority 1): You need a home base for credibility. When someone Googles "[Your Name] coaching," something needs to appear. Keep it simple: who you are, who you help, what you offer, how to book a call. One page is fine. Use Carrd, Webflow, or a simple Squarespace template.

Podcast Guesting (Priority 2): Leverage other people's audiences. Shows like "Developing Dev," "Engineering Leadership Podcast," and "Software Engineering Daily" feature guests with your profile. One 45-minute conversation can reach thousands of your exact target audience. Prepare 3-4 signature stories.

Newsletter (Priority 3): Lower urgency because it takes time to build, but start collecting emails from day one. LinkedIn posts can drive newsletter signups. Don't aim for Gergely's scale—aim for 500 engaged subscribers who match your ICP.

Reddit (Priority 3): Don't sell—participate. Answer questions in r/ExperiencedDevs and r/EngineeringManagers with genuine depth. Over time, you become a recognized name. When you do mention coaching (rarely, contextually), it lands differently.

1. Waiting until you have "perfect" content to start. Your stories from Stripe and Airbnb are enough. Write the first draft, publish it, learn from the response.

1. Thinking of referrals as awkward asks. Reframe: you're asking satisfied clients to help colleagues who are struggling with the same challenges they faced. Make it about the person being helped, not about you.

1. Comparing yourself to coaches who started 5+ years ago. They have audiences you don't. You have recent, specific experience at companies they don't. Different advantages.

1. Considering coaching platforms that take large cuts. You're not building a volume practice. Five clients at $8K beats twenty clients at $2K after platform fees—and the positioning is completely different.

1. Treating "no online presence" as something to be embarrassed about. You've been doing the work, not performing the work. Now you're making your expertise visible. That's a reasonable sequence.

Template 1: The Stripe/Airbnb Insight Post

Format: Story → Lesson → Question

At [Stripe/Airbnb], I watched dozens of engineering managers try to make the jump to director.

The ones who succeeded all did one thing differently:

[Specific observation—be concrete]

Here's what I mean:

[2-3 sentence example]

The ones who stayed stuck?

[Contrast behavior]

If you're an EM eyeing that director role, ask yourself:

[Provocative question related to the insight]

---

I coach tech managers making this exact transition. If you're feeling stuck, let's talk. Link in bio.

Example:

At Stripe, I watched dozens of engineering managers try to make the jump to director.

The ones who succeeded all did one thing differently:

They stopped solving problems and started naming them.

Here's what I mean:

A strong EM sees a delivery risk and fixes it. A director-ready EM sees the same risk, names the pattern across teams, and brings it to leadership as an organizational issue—with options.

The ones who stayed stuck?

They kept being the best problem-solver in the room instead of the person who helped the room see problems differently.

If you're an EM eyeing that director role, ask yourself:

When's the last time you brought a problem UP instead of solving it DOWN?

Template 2: The "What I Wish I'd Known" Post

Format: Past mistake → What happened → What I learned

When I first became a director, I made a mistake that cost me six months of credibility.

[What you did]

It seemed like the right move at the time because [reasoning].

But here's what actually happened:

[Consequence]

What I learned:

[Lesson, stated simply]

If you're stepping into director for the first time, remember: [one-sentence takeaway].

---

I help engineering managers navigate this transition. DM me if you want to talk.

Template 3: The Contrarian Take

Format: Common belief → Why it's wrong → What to do instead

Unpopular opinion about the EM to Director path:

[Common advice] is actually holding you back.

Here's why:

[Explanation—ideally with specific example]

What works better:

[Alternative approach]

I've seen this play out at Stripe, at Airbnb, and with the managers I coach.

The directors who rise fastest aren't the ones who [common behavior].

They're the ones who [contrarian behavior].

Final Note: The strategy here is deliberately focused. You don't need a podcast, a course, a book, and a massive email list. You need 6-8 people per year who trust you enough to pay $8K for your help. Everything in this plan points toward that: being visible to the right small audience, being credible when they check you out, and being easy to reach when they're ready.

Execute the first four weeks. Then we can talk about what's working and adjust.