How I opened my own school and began to earn millions on Excel

“I considered myself 100% an office worker”‎

I entered the Faculty of Engineering Business and Management at Baumanka and started working at the end of my third year. I didn’t understand who I wanted to be, and in order to get a job somewhere by the end of my studies, I needed to do something now and try myself. I had several jobs, and in my sixth year I realized that I was interested in the field of financial management. I got a job at a company where I created a financial model for attracting investment in a mini-refinery - this was my completed graduation project.

After university, I decided to try myself in FMCG - in a company that deals with everyday goods. I went to work at Adidas, where I was responsible for the expenditure side of the budget, logistics costs, production, and salaries. All our reporting depended on business processes. These were not just numbers, but large multifactorial models in which we saw, for example, that a person began to spend more time unpacking boxes. Thanks to numbers, we found the problem and tracked the chain of its occurrence in order to optimize costs.

Then I began to interact more closely with data and see how it affects the business. It was a cool vocational school. But I got laid off and went on to work at Ferrero.

There was a completely different policy: decisions were made for a long time, no one wanted to change anything. And after working at Adidas, my energy was pearlescent! There were a lot of optimization ideas, and I constantly proposed them and tried to implement them, but the process was delayed.

Therefore, I had a lot of free time, and I began to study Excel and analytics more seriously, and learn some tricks.

In the end, I decided to leave Ferrero because I wanted to change the world, and I couldn’t do that here. And I went to Danone - it is considered one of the top companies in FMCG. This was what I wanted because the speed of decision-making there is incredibly high. This is due to the fact that the product has a short shelf life, and huge amounts of data must be processed quickly before it all goes down.

I was responsible for the margin of 50% of the business. If the margin fell, I was the first to receive it. I had complete carte blanche related to employee training and business improvement. I supervised my subordinates and changed processes. Danone still uses some of the files I created.

Then my wings spread, because I felt my importance and saw the results in numbers. We increased margins by 2 percentage points, which is a lot in a multi-billion dollar business.

And I felt that everything was just going well for me, I was managing a business, a team, making decisions, implementing ideas. I considered myself a 100% office worker, and it didn’t matter that I walked to the metro, drove for an hour, then changed to a bus, drove another half hour. I was delighted with this work. And I never thought that I would go into business.

Then the pandemic started and I got pregnant. At first, staying at home was fine, but I missed work. The child grew up a little, but I had a lot of energy, and I had to put it somewhere. I thought: what do I like? Excel!

“The only key to success that I have found is to repeat the same actions that work.”

While on maternity leave, I started making educational videos on social networks. If you look at my old Tik-Tok videos, they are terrible. I had nothing but my phone: no light, no sound, no background. But I still made videos with some tips, posted them for several months, there were few views.

And suddenly some video got 500 thousand views, and I immediately gained 5 thousand subscribers. After that, it became easier to grow, I reached about 40 thousand. I planned to transfer the audience from there to Instagram*. But she didn't want to do this.

At the same time, I registered as self-employed to do a test launch of the course, and announced it on Tik-Tok. Six brave souls came. Looking back, I don’t even understand how they trusted me. Although in the end we were satisfied with the knowledge.

Then I started Instagram*. I didn’t have money for promotion, so I had to go the free route. I slightly improved the background and lighting and took a course on creating videos. They explained how to write a script for a video. I started writing scripts, filmed them, edited them, and posted them.

The first thousand subscribers was very difficult. When I crossed this mark, I was very happy. And then it went faster.

The only key to success that I have found is to repeat the same things that work. You write a script, film it, post it. I posted at least two videos a week. After 1.5–2 months, one of the videos failed again, and more people began to appear. Then I started renting studios for filming so that the videos would be of better quality. So I grew to 100 thousand subscribers in a year, and now there are 170 thousand.

I worked very hard. Mostly while my son was sleeping, at night, or when the nanny came. It happened that a lot of people unfollowed me, but I didn’t give up and continued filming. Of course, the number of students began to depend on the number of subscribers, and the school also began to grow.

“Eight people came to me for the first stream”‎

In general, initially I didn’t think about doing any school. Once upon a time at Danone, my colleagues and I were sitting in the kitchen, and I suggested that they make their own online lessons on Excel, because a lot of people work in this program, but few know how to simplify the process. But then we just laughed and went our separate ways.

And while I was on maternity leave, this thought came up again. I decided to try it. If I have an obsession that I don't follow through on, it starts to consume me. I didn’t need any investment - I just wrote it myself and filmed it on my phone. When I turned 30, friends asked me what to give me. I asked for money to invest in the business. This was my first small investment that I used to create a page on the platform GetCourse.

I completed everything and began to wait for the students. Eight people came to me for the first round. The webinars I did were absolutely terrible. At the first one, I didn’t have enough voice, and I had difficulty finishing it. But I thought: okay, let it be as it is. 12 people came to the second stream.

I continued to shoot videos on social networks and was looking for a nanny so that she could spend 3 days a week for 5 hours with my son while I was working. My husband offered to hire someone for a longer period, but I didn’t want to, it was important for me to spend time with my child.

I had no goal of building any business. I just wanted to be on maternity leave longer, and for this I needed some savings.

Then I had neither a sales department nor an accountant - only curators. These are my former subordinates, whom I offered to work part-time on my course.

The boom happened in the third stream: 50 people came to me, because by that time I had grown up a lot in social networks. Hundreds of people wrote to me and asked questions about the course. I communicated with them myself, and it was very difficult. And then I thought that it seems that I need a sales department, otherwise I won’t be able to cope with such a volume of correspondence. So, during the third stream, I got people who advise me on all sorts of questions about the course.

By the fourth cohort there were already 80 students, and I hired more curators. Now I have five of them, and in the new stream there will be 10. They all come from large companies.

At first, I studied financial issues myself and immediately opened an individual entrepreneur so that there would be no questions with taxes. But this became difficult for me too, so an accountant appeared. And so, as new tasks arose, new people appeared in the team.

At the same time, until recently, I filmed all the videos myself and ran my own channel. Just three months ago I hired a real estate developer. It was very scary because it seems like only you can do it perfectly. Moreover, in my videos there is a lot about Excel, it’s not just creativity. But I trusted it, and I’m very happy about it, because after all, every task has its own professionals.

“Our educational license was confirmed within a week”

When you have an educational license, you act as a more serious enterprise. Plus, I was often asked if I had it and if it was possible to get a tax deduction. And I didn't like saying, "No." So I decided to take it on. I wanted a state-approved course.

At that time, five streams had passed, and I already had profit that could be spent. And I hired a lawyer. It was necessary to describe each module, the technical component for completing the course, draw up an educational offer agreement, and prepare a program with an hourly breakdown. We collected a package of documents and sent it through Gosuslugi for approval.

I am registered in Surgut, and my individual entrepreneur is registered there, so the documents had to be sent there. The Ministry called me, we discussed the nuances a lot, they advised what to improve in the preparation of documents.

This is not the case in Moscow; they may simply not accept documents without explanation. And Surgut turned out to be very involved, we even developed some kind of partnership. Our educational license was confirmed within a week.

Now a lot of related troubles have been added. For example, every student must now be accepted into an online school by order, and he must have all the information. You need to have a lot of documents for curators and invited speakers - each of them needs an agreement, they are registered as self-employed and must pay tax. Now this is a very serious office that requires a huge list of documents. Fortunately, there is a lawyer who advises on this.

When I received my license, I had a boom in students: there were 175 of them in the stream. It turned out that it is important for people that they can get a tax deduction.

“Now I earn a million in net profit per stream”

The number of students grew. This really inspired and motivated me. Therefore, when the time came to return to the office from maternity leave, I had some kind of break. I loved the office, I had a good career, I received about 200 thousand, I liked the team, being part of something big.

But everything worked out at my school, people were happy, and in terms of money I began to surpass my office earnings. I earned approximately the same income in the first year of work. Now I earn a million in net profit per stream.

So I started wondering what to do. I discussed this with everyone I could. It was impossible to combine: you can’t do both well.

However, during this period, changes began at Danone, which alarmed me somewhat. When I came to the office to pick up documents, I saw empty tables and partitions between workstations. There were few people - everyone was drooping. And deathly silence. This cannot be compared with what happened before, when we constantly exchanged experiences, offered something, joked. And everything was no longer the same.

Therefore, I decided to go into business, but with the note that I could still return to the office. True, this mark soon disappeared. Now I'm sure I did the right thing.

Having your own business is a very interesting thing. Every time you set creative tasks for yourself and your team, you solve them.

Now 548 people have passed through my school - that’s seven streams, we are preparing the eighth. An expert can say with a high degree of probability how many people will sign up for his course. I have all the analytics for the school. I know my conversions and I know that in order to sell a course to 100 people, I need about 1000 people to apply for registration, some of whom will change their minds, will not want, or will not be able to participate.

By November I hope to launch a new course, because I understand that this one is already starting to get boring. Almost everyone who could and wanted to passed it. So we need to further develop our product line.

And I really want the new course to be interactive, so that people come and say: “Wow, how cool!” Now I I’m writing it, we’re filming cinematic summaries for the lessons, there will be guest speakers, I want to make a book for the course. Its creation will cost more than 600 thousand.

“As it turns out, people come to me not only for Excel, but also for support”

When I started, it seemed to me that this was all frivolous, not like working in an office.

The fact is that in my family the intellectual principle is very developed. Respect is expressed when you occupy a cool position and lead cool projects, and it doesn’t matter how much you earn. We have always been measured by knowledge, not money.

And when after this you go into online business, at first it seems to you that this is nonsense. When I worked in an office, I didn't even have Instagram*. And at first it seemed to me that I was wasting my experience in companies somewhere.

And then I realized that it was this experience that prepared me to do something of my own. Give jobs. For example, my team members' salaries can vary from 40 to 80 thousand per stream, and for many this is just a part-time job.

When I was building the school’s operating system, I took a lot from FMCG: KPIs for the team, wages, feedback, and so on.

For example, all curators have a KPI to bring each student to the end of the course. If something is wrong with the latter, we work with him, communicate, find out what questions he has.

I have statistics on students - few people keep them in other online schools. And for those who teach, 40-50% of students reach the end of the course, and for us - 86%. And the students are happy. They share how they are growing up the career ladder, how their salaries are increased, how they are praised for their reports.

As it turns out, people come to me not only for Excel, but also for support. Sometimes we just communicate with the students, I encourage them - they are very cool, interesting, we exchange experience and energy. And when they talk about their growth, you think: “How cool that you helped someone.” After all, the most important thing is the opportunity to help people improve their lives.

I have always wanted to change the world, even bit by bit, and add something useful to my life. When I reach a different level, I would really like to participate in charity. And of course, develop your school, create courses in other areas with invited experts.

*Activities of Meta Platforms Inc. and its social networks Facebook and Instagram are prohibited in the Russian Federation.