Tiana Coates
Tiana Coates is an entrepreneur and owner of Winding Wick Candles based in Garland, Texas.
In 2020, Coates made over $70,000 from selling her online candle-making business course, including $40,000 in just one month.
Here's how she developed, produced, and marketed the course, as told to freelance writer Kaila Yu.
I always wanted the freedom of running my own business. Ten years before becoming an entrepreneur, I worked at the desk as a pharmacy technician. In my free time I would always tinker with business ideas: dropshipping, selling items on Shopify, hand-making trinkets, but none of them ever panned out.
In a spark of inspiration, I came up with the idea of hand-making candles. It made perfect sense, I loved candles and would buy them every week for my home. I had zero experience so I started researching on online forums, blogs, and YouTube. The candle-making process seemed straightforward on the tutorials that I watched, but it took me several months of trial and error to get my candles to burn correctly and hold their scent.