The Story of Teri Ijeoma: From Intern to Teachable Superstar

I was at the @ConvertKit conference in 2019, when a creator came to thank me

She had just made $100,000+ in a single month from her online course (!!)

Here's the story of Teri Ijeoma, the most successful @teachable creator & the only person to make $20M+ in a single year: pic.twitter.com/6y2fudcQoX

— Ankur Nagpal (@ankurnagpal) April 3, 2023

Teri's path to online course superstardom was anything but conventional

She went to MIT as an undergrad & then to the Dallas Theological Seminary for her Masters

Even though she interned on Wall Street, she thought she'd spend her career working in education or in a church

— Ankur Nagpal (@ankurnagpal) April 3, 2023

And that's exactly where her career was heading as the Assistant Principal of an elementary school

But, she picked up a hobby of swing trading

For 6 years, Teri had been learning how to trade by buying expensive in-person courses & honing her craft through years of iteration

— Ankur Nagpal (@ankurnagpal) April 3, 2023

By 2018, she averaged ~$300 a day trading & could replace her full-time job

And took the opportunity to travel the world with a digital nomad group, We Roam

It was on these trips to Korea & Thailand that the other people in her group asked Teri to teach them how to trade

— Ankur Nagpal (@ankurnagpal) April 3, 2023

The live training to the nomad group was an instant hit

When Teri returned to Dallas, she asked the seminary if she could host a course

To her surprise, she sold 71 paying seats (first time charging money!) and made $3,600

Little did she know her life was about to change

— Ankur Nagpal (@ankurnagpal) April 3, 2023

She soon had inbound demand to teach her course everywhere

Atlanta, California, Houston

The only way she could scale was by taking the show online

And that's when she launched her course on @teachable and hit an inflection point leading to her first 6-figure month

— Ankur Nagpal (@ankurnagpal) April 3, 2023

When I met Teri in the summer of 2019, her business was purring

We held a challenge that summer to see who would be the top earning creator

Teri told me she wanted to be our #1 creator

To be honest, I didn't 100% believe her but she took that personally & won the challenge

— Ankur Nagpal (@ankurnagpal) April 3, 2023

From there, her business scaled to unimaginable heights

In 2021, she averaged over a million dollars every single month

Leading to her being the top selling creator on @teachable that year

And one of only 2 people to hit 8 figures in a year on the platform!

— Ankur Nagpal (@ankurnagpal) April 3, 2023

Here's why her business worked:

1 - Teri was great at learning from people further along than her

Teaching always came naturally to her

But she didn't know the business of online courses

So she invested in training from @MariahCoz & @danielleleslie to learn how to sell

— Ankur Nagpal (@ankurnagpal) April 3, 2023

2 - She invested in the power of storytelling

Teri did a great job telling stories of successful students

She hosted an event called The Power of 1 Million & had 1,000 separate students celebrate having a $1,000 day trading

Successful students are the only way a course scales

— Ankur Nagpal (@ankurnagpal) April 3, 2023

3 - She leveled up her peer group

She invested in relationships & surrounded herself with other business owners, all of whom motivated each other

In 2021, she had two other friends hit million dollars in a single month

This pushed her harder + they all raised each other up

— Ankur Nagpal (@ankurnagpal) April 3, 2023