Jackie Coffey, AKA Jackie The Happy Investor, doesn’t think of herself as a creator; she thinks of herself as a real estate investor. Even so, Jackie has achieved macro-influencer status with over 100k TikTok followers. Her TikTok content has reached millions of people and inspired a full-blown creator business with online courses, an app, and live events.
If you want to know more about how she built her highly lucrative side hustle, keep scrolling.
How Creator Jackie Coffey Built Her Online Course Business
Jackie has been flipping houses for 22 years now. It’s her bread and butter; her main business. She only ended up on TikTok because she broke her foot, and she physically couldn’t do her normal job.
“I said…you know what? Let’s go on TikTok and start giving some pointers and tips so other people can flip houses.”
Jackie doesn’t gatekeep, so everything was fair game:
- How to set up an LLC
- Deal with contractors
- Find funds
…and what to do if a house doesn’t sell.
“I'm giving all of this information in regular, short, easy-to-understand videos. And I'm getting a big following pretty quickly.”
The first video Jackie posted was about how she successfully DIYed her own inground pool:
That video now has over 2 million views and 160k likes.
“After about two months, people started asking me, 'Do you have a course? Will you have a course?’ The feedback was, ‘We have to scroll so far down on your TikTok — it's very hard to find specific information.’"
Jackie organized some of her videos into playlists, but they didn’t meet people's need for guidance through the whole process of buying and flipping a house. “So, I started looking into it, and I was like, ‘Okay, we'll make a course.’ I had no idea it was going to take off the way it did.”
How Jackie created her first course
It took Jackie about three weeks to create her first course: Hustle and Flow Into Millions, Flipping Edition. Here’s how she did it.
- First, she created a storyboard. “Before I looked for platforms and before I even thought about the technical side. I said, ‘Let's get the whole outline together,’" says Jackie.
Creating a storyboard is the best way to outline a course and determine which creative assets you need to develop. It doesn’t need to be complicated; you can use a free tool like Google Docs or Google Slides to create your storyboard.
Jackie’s approach was to write out every step required to flip a house from start to finish, aiming to make the information simple enough for a 13-year-old to understand.
“Everything I do is in easy-to-understand terms, right? That's even my line on TikTok. I say, ‘Hey, I'm Jackie The Happy Investor. I talk about all things real estate investing. I make it easy to understand, short and simple, to the point, because I know y'all got shit to do today.’”
- Next, she researched course hosting platforms. “I went online, and I just typed in ‘What's the best place to host a course?’” Jackie says. It didn’t take long for her to find Kajabi.
“I looked at some examples of other Kajabi courses, and I was like, ‘Oh, I can do that.’"
Kajabi is a very popular option among course creators, but if you’re looking for some other hosting tools to consider, check out Thinkific, Podia, and LearnWorlds.
- Then, she designed the course in Canva. Using her storyboard as a map, Jackie started creating her course in Canva.
“I simply got into Canva and started making slides with video and voiceover. I put all the information in there in pretty short chapters.”
Jackie used Canva’s built-in voiceover tool to record her script. “I built all the slides first. I wrote my script in the notes section of Canva, and then when it was time, I just went back and looked at my notes and recorded everything.”
And including video? That was a very intentional choice.
“I didn't overedit. I made it a very big point to simplify. But I will tell you this, I made a lot of it video content so people couldn't just buy the course, print the whole thing out, and then ask to cancel it." - Pricing and promoting the course: Jackie spoke with her attorney about pricing, and he advised her that it was worth much more than she wanted to charge. “He said, 'Well, with all of the information that you have, you should do it for $10,000. It should be a much higher-cost course.’”
Jackie didn’t agree. She designed her course for people who have never flipped a house before. “They don’t have those kinds of funds yet,” she said.
Jackie assumed she’d sell around 10 courses. To break even, she’d need to earn enough to cover the platform (Kajabi), attorney fees, and trademark registrations. "So, I priced it at $998. But then it just took off extraordinarily.”
Jackie had announced that the course was coming when it was about halfway finished. “I'm usually a wait-til-it's-done kind of person, but there was so much demand for it,” she says. “When I knew that recording was going well and there were no real hiccups, I decided to announce it.”
At the time, people wanted to preorder the course, but Jackie made them wait a little longer.
“So, what I did was I made a video, and I said, ‘Today's the day. The course is ready. Y'all have asked for it, and now it’s here.’ And then I also did a TikTok LIVE where I also announced it.”
Then came the flood. Jackie says that between 200 and 250 people signed up for her course within the first week. “I had to stop saying I did it at cost because we quickly surpassed that,” she says.
Since then, though, Jackie’s sales strategy has been more subtle. Unless there’s a sale going on, she’s not talking about the course.
“What I will do is if somebody sends me a message or a comment saying, 'Hey, do you have a course?’ or 'I heard about your course,’ then I will respond publicly. It gives me a free way to talk about the course without bombarding people.”
The Icing on Top of The Courses: Live Events and The Happy Investor App
About six months after launching Hustle and Flow Into Millions, Flipping Edition, Jackie created her second course: Hustle and Flow Into Millions, Landlord Edition.
But, true to form, she didn’t wake up one morning and decide she needed another income stream. “I didn’t plan on doing a landlord course until there was demand for it,” Jackie says.
In the flipping course, Jackie included one module for people who wanted to become landlords. It covered the basics, but there was demand for more:
- Leases
- Fair Housing Act information
- Section 8 information
- Tenant screening
- Pets
- Property management
And all the documents that make the process feel less overwhelming.
Jackie had already figured out Kajabi and Canva, so the second course came together fast (it took her about two weeks to create), even though it contained more information than the flipping course.
“The flipping course has about 30-something documents, but the landlord course has 56,” she says.
After that, it made sense to bundle the two together. If someone was brand new to real estate investing and wanted the full path — flip first, then buy and hold — they could get both courses at a discount. Jackie also gave some of her original students a discount on the second course since they bought in before the bundle existed.
That’s exactly how the creator side of Jackie’s business has grown: one clear audience request at a time. The courses helped fund the next layer of the business: live events. Jackie is now hosting annual in-person events for her community. Her first one sold out, but even then, she kept the same philosophy that shaped her course pricing.
“I try to make everything as cost-effective as I can because I understand most of the people getting into this are new and they’re very, very cautious with what they spend,” she says.
In addition to the live events, Jackie recently launched The Happy Investor App. This tool includes a deal analyzer, ARV estimates, deal history, a directory of investor-friendly professionals (money lenders, contractors, etc.), and an “Ask Jackie AI” assistant for real estate investing questions.
“I’m just kind of following along with the direction that it’s going,” Jackie says.
That might be the biggest takeaway from Jackie’s creator business. She built the first course because people asked for it. She built the second one because her followers needed help getting to the next step. Then, she added live events and an app because her community had grown beyond one-time content.
Real estate is still her main business, but her income from being a creator is nothing to sniff at.
“It is now a business,” Jackie says. “At first, it was just kind of like, ‘Let me see if this works,’ but it has developed into a business.”
If you’re thinking about launching a course, Jackie’s path is a good reminder that you don’t need to build the whole business on day one. Start with the thing people are already asking for. Make it useful. Keep it simple. Then listen for what they need next.
Psst, this is a good next read: The Best of Manychat for Course Creators
Frequently asked questions
To become a course creator, start by identifying the knowledge, skills, or processes people already ask you about. Then, organize that information into a clear step-by-step outline. You don’t need a complicated setup to launch your first online course. Many creators start with simple tools like Google Docs, Canva, and a course-hosting platform like Kajabi, Thinkific, Podia, or LearnWorlds.
The most important part is making your course useful and easy to follow. Jackie The Happy Investor created her first course after her TikTok audience kept asking for her real estate investing advice in one organized place. Instead of overcomplicating the process, she focused on giving students exactly what they needed: clear instructions, practical examples, and helpful documents.
The price of an online course depends on the value of the information, your audience, and the transformation your course helps people achieve. Some online courses cost less than $100, while more in-depth courses can cost thousands of dollars.
Before setting a price, consider who your course is for and what they can realistically afford. Jackie’s attorney suggested she charge much more for her real estate investing course, but she priced it at $998 to make it accessible to beginners. Her goal was to make the course valuable without pricing out the people who needed it most.
One of the best ways to sell an online course is to build trust before you sell. Share helpful free content, answer your audience’s questions, and pay attention to what people keep asking for. When your audience already sees you as a trusted expert, your course becomes the well-organized next step rather than a hard sell.
Jackie calls this “selling without selling.” She doesn’t constantly push her courses. Instead, she responds when people ask for more information, want documents, or need everything in one place. This makes the course feel natural, useful, and aligned with what her audience already wants.
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Originally published: Jul 17, 2026
