I've spent years of my life teaching English language and literature, and years of my life playing at a mediocre level in 50 and 100 zoom pools with very little bankroll management or study.

Then, late last year, the province of Ontario in Canada became a segregated online poker market, and my relationship to the game quickly changed.

First of all, Ontario no longer has zoom, so I was playing regular tables. Then I watched Uri Peleg's course and it changed how I thought about the game. Really without many changes, I was beating 100nl quite easily. Ontario is softer than the global market. I was still a rec, so I took a shot at 200nl with like a 3k bankroll and kept winning. Now, I was studying with GTO Wizard 3 hours a week. I joined a CFP. I got coaching from Poker Giraffe. I was doing better and better. I'm up $20k over 100k hands, played over the last six months. Now playing every soft $500 table on 888 or Party (there's not always a lot of action), and still grinding 200nl regularly with a winrate of 6.5ish/100.

My hourly ev was at something like $60 or $70/h, and I was still teaching English on the side for $30/h. This felt a little silly, but on the other hand, poker as a vocational pursuit is new to me, and it's still scary. What if the games get tougher, or I'm sun-running massively? 100k hands is enough to have a guess what's going on, but not enough to be sure. It pretty much guarantees I'm a winner, at least. I'm also in school to become a therapist, so I can't put in much more volume than 20k/month.

I was getting really tired of teaching English. I am so tired of grading bad Macbeth papers and proofreading essays for tutoring clients. My girlfriend whom I live with is amazing, and she's supportive of me playing poker, but it's scary for her too. The idea of me dropping all "real work" to play is a bit daunting.

But it occurred to me, I am a good teacher, and I am so passionate about this game right now. Teaching poker to newer players felt way more interesting to me than explaining to another student why "Macbeth is a bad person" was not quite an A+ thesis. And I really, truly believed that for recs and really low stakes regs, I could be super helpful.

So, I started trying to build a poker coaching business.

Man, I am just not equipped for trolls on the internet. I don't know. Maybe I've got a little Hellmuth in me. Each time someone says "lmao this pathetic scammer etc etc" I lose sleep, I'm not present in my day for an hour after it happens. I'm getting better at dealing with it, but it's been slow-going. It's not clear how to get outreach or advertise somewhere that people actually want it. Reddit is a nightmare, the Ontario Discord is a nightmare. Hopefully with word of mouth it gets easier.

So, I guess I'm looking for advice and possibly validation. Is it unreasonable for someone who is only barely established as a winning reg at mid stakes to offer coaching for players struggling at low stakes? I think my rates are reasonable. 50USD/h for hand review and concepts; 65USD/h for a 6h package with DBA. It's almost exactly what I make playing, and someone from a respected CFP was charging $140CAD/h playing the same stakes as me with the same winrate, but a 300k sample.

I've gotten some clients. I did 1h with two separate clients, and someone pre-bought the 6h DBA package for September. I really believe that it's a good deal; that I can break down concepts like checking back, the nuances of range advantage, geometric bet sizing, SPR, all the preflop stuff (obviously)... and that these things will really be worth it for some players in the long run. But I can't shake the fear that clients will fizzle out and I will have wasted a huge chunk of emotional energy when I could have just studied for school or something.

Does anyone have advice? Critiques? Comments? I'm really game for honest takes, delivered respectfully. The site is colliepokercoaching.ca

Thanks in advance.

You're living your life based on fear and lack and deluding yourself into thinking you're being logical. Pretty common occurrence. Decide where you want to go, then intend to go there, and go there. Stop with all of this silly mental masturbation