Silvia Derom: turning a coach's workbook into a digital business —

A Belgian career coach for creative generalists, with a thriving one-on-one practice and a workbook she wanted to turn into a digital product and online program. What began as one question about scaling became a years-long partnership — and the platform, Verhaal Digitaal, that became the first proof of everything I now build.

Silvia had built something real: a coaching practice for creative generalists, built on genuine one-on-one relationships, and a workbook she used to guide people through her method. She was ready for the next step — turning that workbook into a digital product and an online program, so her method could reach people beyond the hours she could personally sit with.

The challenge wasn't "put the workbook online." It was structural: how do you turn a deeply personal, relationship-driven method into a digital product. With the payments, memberships, and structure a real business needs, without flattening the human experience that made it work?That question doesn't have an off-the-shelf answer. It needs architecture.

We didn't start with software. We started with the business model, how her method could become a digital product and program, where the value was, and how to build it without hollowing out the personal experience. Strategy first, in genuine partnership: her method and her clients, my architecture, shaping each other.

Then we built the platform to carry it: Verhaal Digitaal. No existing tool held what she needed, so I built one — on a commerce core I heavily modified to handle Belgian and European tax rules, subscriptions, memberships, and an affiliate program, all structured around how her method actually works. It was built alongside real practices from day one — Silvia and one of her own clients first, other creative generalists and solopreneurs later. This is the same human-centred approach I'd been applying to systems since 2015 — and Verhaal Digitaal was the first product I built end to end. Everything I architect now traces back to it.

Silvia's method moved off the page and into a real digital product: an online program with the memberships, subscriptions, and structure of a proper business, running on Verhaal Digitaal. Through the platform she processed six figures in revenue, served over 1,200 customers, and fulfilled more than 1,600 orders — while the routine ran in the background, so her time went where it mattered: to clients, to writing, to the work that energises her rather than drains her.

That's the pattern worth naming: the automation didn't replace the human relationship. It made room for more of it. And because it was a partnership rather than a one-off project, the thinking kept compounding as the business grew.

Silvia eventually outgrew what Verhaal Digitaal could offer at the time. She needed an integrated community for her members, and as a solo builder I couldn't ship it before she needed it, so she moved on. I don't frame that as a loss. It was one of the clearest lessons of my early product years: coaches don't just need tools, they need a room to grow in. That lesson is one of the reasons Coach Office Club exists today.

Steven thinks along with you. He is very involved and genuinely interested in where you want to go as an entrepreneur. He's someone you can rely on, and he brings more than just technical support — he thinks about what business models can work for you, and how to go beyond the hourly-invoice model. Silvia Derom · career coach for creative generalists · Verhaal Digitaal partner

If you've got a workbook, a framework, or a way of working that only reaches as far as your calendar, there's a way to turn it into something that scales — without losing what makes it human.