The Center for Graduate Career Success Case Study
Scaling a Content-based Business
To create ROI with higher education degrees
PROBLEM: Driven by a mission to guide fellow PhD graduates into profitable careers, this founder needed to find a scalable, recurring revenue model for her rich insights and empathetic coaching content.
SOLUTION: The founder shifted from a consultancy to a product business, and created a secure online content and learning platform. She built new relationships around PhD institutions to adopt the platform, and transformed the career journey for every single student under their care. Fending off competition, the business is expanding its offering to reach other difficult-to-engage audience with life-changing content.
From consultant to content
The company initially provided workshops, conferences, and consulting services directly to graduate students. PhD graduates flocked to their events, and consumed their online recordings of academic and industry veterans for guidance on preparing for non-academic careers.
From content to product
Organizing the content into stages of maturity and gating it for revenue led to an unexpected path to revenue that simultaneously created a defensible moat against its many competitors. Precise Change entered the picture to facilitate the transformation, mature the marketing strategies, and formulate a success plan toward sustainable sources of revenue.
The national stage
Slugging well above its weight, the company was noticed and approached by an international organization in an adjacent space about collaboration. Precise Change helped the leadership team navigate the unexpected attention, change the lens on its self-perception, and position it as a critical partner for this and other international organizations.
Diversification
Working with existing customers, Precise Change helped the team discover a new and completely unaddressed audience exponentially larger than the existing base, and expand into a massive self-funded expansion to secure significant market share in its domain. The company launched additional products that have positioned it as the clear industry leader.
Impact
By offering solutions that are directly aligned with increasing regulatory scrutiny of the higher education sector, the company is becoming central to the academic institutional response to provide better preparation for careers in industry.
“When I approached Michael about business advising for our fledgling start-up, I knew we had to pivot our business and build out B2B products, but needed guidance on how to get there. Over the years, Michael has advised on all parts of the business - from developing big strategic initiatives, identifying and addressing customer pain points, fine-tuning sales pitches and slide decks, helping with marketing strategy and copy, and advising on how to build a sustainable growth culture. No matter if it’s a small tweak or a big pivot, a time to celebrate or hunker down, I know that Michael is there as our cheerleader and confidant.”