1-on-1 Coaching

You've got the journalism. Let's build the business together.

1-on-1 coaching with Project C gives you a thought partner to help you take your business to the next level, whether you're just starting out or are a few years in and ready to scale and stop being the bottleneck in your own operation.

Book a Discovery Call → Meet Blair

How We Work

Nobody hands you a playbook when you go independent.

You became a creator journalist because you love the work. You wanted to report, create, do work that matters, own it and feel agency over your own career.

But now you're also running a business. Odds are, nobody taught you how to do that part. And now you're exhausted from figuring it all out alone, second-guessing yourself and shouldering everything.

Project C's coaching gives you a senior-level thought partner to help you make decisions, gain confidence, learn key skills and figure out how to make it all sustainable. It is the launchpad for you becoming the founder your work deserves.

Your Coach

Blair Hickman

Blair is a people-first media executive, strategist and coach who spent nearly two decades leading innovation, transformation and strategic growth inside fast-growing newsrooms like Vox and ProPublica. She's designed content strategies that reached hundreds of millions of people, led strategic planning and brand refreshes, and built Vox's consumer revenue program from the ground up.

She's an expert in design and product thinking, and believes deeply in building a business that can support your life. She's a co-founder of Going Solo, and at this point has coached nearly 100 creator journalists on launching and sustaining independent businesses.

You'll also get occasional sessions with Project C founder Liz Kelly Nelson, who led innovation at The Washington Post and Vox before building the 200+ member Project C community and The Independent Journalism Atlas. Her ongoing research into how journalism and the creator economy intersect informs everything we do here.

Between the two of them, you're working with people who've actually built the kinds of things you're trying to build.

Is This Right For You?

You might be a good fit if...

📚

You want to figure out how to keep your business running while reclaiming the joy of actually making the work you care about.

👥

You need to hire, or just did, but have never actually managed anyone before and aren't sure where to start.

🤔

You're struggling with a lost sense of identity after leaving the newsroom, and it's getting in the way of building what's next.

💰

You're making money but have no idea if your business model is sustainable, or how to grow it without burning out.

🎯

You have too many ideas pulling you in different directions and need help figuring out which one to actually pursue.

🚀

You're ready to stop winging it. You want real strategy behind the business side of what you're building.

What You Get

Four months of
real work together

This isn't a course and it isn't a quick fix. It's four months of working closely with someone who understands what you're building and can help you make real progress on the things that feel stuck.

✓ Two 60-minute coaching sessions per month
✓ A sounding board for the decisions that keep you up at night, from pricing to editorial direction to whether it's time to hire
✓ Resilience and capacity coaching for the hard stretches when you're questioning all of it
✓ Async support between sessions via Voxer and email, so you're not waiting two weeks when something comes up
✓ Access to our resource library and our trusted network of freelancers when you need hands, not just strategy

What Coaching Looks Like

What we work on together

Our style blends intuitive coaching, teaching and strategic advisory. You lead the sessions, and we adapt as you grow. We prioritize action, iteration and sustainable progress.

🎯

Ruthlessly prioritize

Stop chasing six different ideas and get clear on the one thing that moves your business forward right now.

📈

Grow your audience and revenue

Look at your business model with fresh eyes. Find the opportunities you're too close to see and build a realistic plan to go after them.

⚙️

Build systems that don't depend on you

Create processes that keep things running even when you step away. Get your operations running in a way that's actually sustainable.

💪

Gain confidence to lead

Whether you're managing contractors or doing everything yourself, learn to lead your business instead of just reacting to it.

💡

Deal with the burnout

Learn to break big ambitions into steps you can actually take. Create space for the parts of your life that aren't work. Stay in this for the long haul.

🎨

Experiment and play

Not every session is about optimizing. Sometimes the most useful thing is permission to try something weird and see what happens.

FAQ

Still have questions? Email us and we'll talk it through.

Blair lets you guide the conversation. She has plans and frameworks ready, but she doesn't force a rigid curriculum. If you come in knowing exactly what you need to work on, great. If you come in feeling scattered, she'll help you find the thread. Some weeks you'll work on strategy. Other weeks you'll work through something more personal, like the identity shift of going from newsroom journalist to business owner. It depends on what you need that week.

Going Solo is a group workshop for journalists who haven't launched yet. Coaching is for people who are already in it. You've started your thing and now you need help growing it, fixing what isn't working, or just getting out of your own way.

We focus on strategic foundations. The goal is to build your own capacity so you can make better decisions about where to spend your time and money. That said, we also do hands-on document review and feedback on work that drives growth. And if you need someone to just do the work (write a grant proposal, redesign a landing page), we can connect you to freelancers in our network who we trust.

$1,000 per month for four months. For a fraction of what you'd pay an employee, you get an experienced media leader in your corner who has built the kinds of things you're building, both independently and with teams.

The next version of your business starts with one conversation.

We'll chat about where you are and where you want to go. Sometimes, it makes sense for us to peek at your work during the call. (We call it a First Impression Audit.) But mostly this is an honest conversation to figure out if we're a good fit for each other.

Let's talk →