How Sabrin started her Teachable school after 8,000+ 1:1 lessons

Sabrin Hietanen was broke in Japan when she bought a secondhand laptop with a Japanese keyboard from a thrift shop. 

She had no students, no teaching experience, and no clear path forward. All she knew was that she needed a job she could do while traveling the world.

Six years later, she's taught over 8,000 one-on-one Finnish lessons, built a following of 32,000+ on Instagram, and created multiple courses that reach students while she backpacks through Croatia or cat-sits in Helsinki.

The secret wasn't just teaching Finnish. Sabrin noticed a problem nobody else was solving: students could study the language for a decade and still struggle to have a basic conversation with native speakers. Finnish textbooks teach written Finnish, but Finns don't actually speak that way. The gap between classroom Finnish and real Finnish was leaving learners stranded.

Sabrin built her business by filling that gap, teaching the spoken Finnish that textbooks ignore.

I had some students who had been learning Finnish for like 10 years and they still could not understand anything I was saying. I knew this needed to change." --Sabrin Hietanen, Sabrin The Finnish Teacher

Sabrin’s Teachable journey at a glance

The turning point

Before becoming a Finnish teacher, Sabrin had held more than 20 different jobs. Taxi driver. Soccer coach. Housekeeper. Nanny. Each position was just something to fund her next trip, another temporary stop in a life built around travel.

"I've done so many jobs because I was traveling so much. Everywhere I went, I needed a new job. And then that's actually how I started teaching Finnish, because I was traveling and I needed an online job." -Sabrin Hietanen, Sabrin The Finnish Teacher

Her ex-boyfriend, a Japanese teacher, mentioned a platform called italki where anyone could sign up to teach languages. Sabrin was skeptical but desperate. With almost no money and a keyboard she couldn't read, she signed up at $6 per hour just to get some students.

The first few lessons were terrifying. Sabrin had no curriculum, no structure, and no idea where to begin with students. A breakthrough came when one student showed up with a textbook and asked her to teach from it. That student saved her from paralysis. Suddenly she had a framework.

But teaching from that textbook revealed something troubling. Students who had studied Finnish for years couldn't understand her when she spoke normally. The written Finnish they'd learned was essentially a different language from what Finns actually use in conversation.

"These poor students are wasting their time learning a Finnish in a way that nobody speaks." -Sabrin Hietanen, Sabrin The Finnish Teacher

Why Sabrin choose Teachable

By 2022, Sabrin's calendar was fully booked. Every slot she opened filled immediately. The success created a new problem: she was burning out from back-to-back lessons and couldn't scale beyond the hours in her day.

"Relying on 1:1 lessons was so stressful that I felt like every minute that I have is spent on these students. And I really didn't want to say no. But I also didn't want to get burnt out. So I thought, 'what can I do so these people can still keep learning with me while I still have my sanity?'" -Sabrin Hietanen, Sabrin The Finnish Teacher

The idea of creating courses had been floating around, but the catalyst came from an unexpected place. A company that helps creators build courses booked a fake lesson with Sabrin to pitch their services. They'd handle marketing, they said, in exchange for 50% of her revenue. And she'd need to post four times a day on Instagram.

"If I have to do all the work anyway, why would I give you 50%?" -Sabrin Hietanen, Sabrin The Finnish Teacher

That conversation was the push Sabrin needed. The same day she rejected the offer, she filmed her first Instagram reel and started building her audience. Teachable gave her a way to host her courses without surrendering half her income or spending hours a day on marketing someone else required.

Sabrin’s strategies for building a language school on Teachable

Strategy 1: Turn Your One-on-One Experience Into Course Content

Sabrin spent a year and a half writing her spoken Finnish textbook before filming any courses. The content came directly from thousands of hours teaching one-on-one students and observing where they got stuck.

"I really wanted to be different... I really wanted to publish a book, not just some quick PDF material." -Sabrin Hietanen, Sabrin The Finnish Teacher

That book became the foundation for her courses. The first course covers the first six chapters (15 hours of content for total beginners), and the second covers the remaining five chapters for students who know the basics. Students who purchase the courses get the book as course material.

Take action: Before creating a course, spend time documenting the patterns you see in one-on-one work. Your best course material comes from real student struggles, not what you think they should learn.

Strategy 2: Keep One-on-One Lessons for Balance and Feedback

Many course creators want to eliminate one-on-one work entirely. Sabrin chose a different approach. She reduced her lesson load from 150-200 lessons per month at peak to around 60-80 now, keeping individual teaching as part of her income mix.

Take action: Consider keeping a reduced schedule of direct student interaction. Live teaching provides a feedback loop that makes your courses better and breaks up isolated course creation work.

Strategy 3: Use Social Media to Build Audience, Not Sell Directly

Sabrin kept her Instagram account private for the first three months because she was embarrassed. When she finally went public, she committed to posting every single day. That sprint from 100 to 10,000 followers took roughly six weeks.

"I knew that I need to do focus on social media content at some point be making sales. This is the way for me to find my customers, so I have to do this. I didn't even think about it." -Sabrin Hietanen, Sabrin The Finnish Teacher

The daily posting pace was unsustainable. After two months she scaled back to two or three posts per week. But the initial intensity established her presence and built momentum she could maintain with less effort.

Take action: When launching on social media, consider an intense sprint to establish presence, then settle into a sustainable rhythm. Building audience before you have products to sell removes the pressure of immediate conversion.

Strategy 4: Raise Prices to Manage Demand

Sabrin started at $6 per hour to get her first students. As demand grew, she used price increases strategically to control her workload and reclaim time for course creation.

"Whenever I felt like I was getting too many students, I just raised my prices. So then I always lost some, but then I was happy with more time." -Sabrin Hietanen, Sabrin The Finnish Teacher

Take action: If you're overwhelmed with demand, raise prices before burning out. Losing some customers to gain time for product development is often the right trade.

Expert corner: How Sabrin thinks about teaching languages

Finnish presents a unique challenge that most language learners don't expect. The written form taught in textbooks differs dramatically from the spoken language used in daily conversation. Students can master grammar rules and vocabulary but still struggle to understand native speakers.

"In Finnish there's a really big difference between written Finnish, which is the official Finnish, but nobody actually speaks that way, and then the spoken Finnish, how people actually speak... most students don't know any of the spoken Finnish. So they cannot actually speak with Finns at all because they don't understand us at all." -Sabrin Hietanen, Sabrin The Finnish Teacher

Sabrin's approach addresses this gap directly. Rather than teaching textbook rules and then noting the real-world exceptions, she teaches spoken Finnish alongside the formal grammar so students can actually use what they learn.

Her third course, "Learn Real Finnish by Listening," extends this philosophy by focusing on audio comprehension. Students hear natural speech patterns rather than the artificially slow pronunciation common in traditional courses.

Looking ahead

Sabrin's immediate focus is refining her marketing approach. After initially hitting her goal of three course sales per month with minimal promotion, she recognized that passive income requires active work.

The travel lifestyle continues. During her interview, Sabrin was cat-sitting for a student in Helsinki while planning a backpacking trip through the Balkans with a friend. Her apartment in northern Finland sits on Airbnb when she's away. Teaching Finnish online means she can work from anywhere with wifi.

What to do next

Explore Sabrin’s courses: Visit Sabrin’s website and Teachable school to explore her courses. Want to learn Finnish? Check out Sabrin’s Ultimate Guide, Ultimate Guide 2, and Listening course.

Connect with Sabrin:  Instagram | TikTok | italki

Try Teachable today: Begin turning your expertise into a profitable online education business with Teachable. Start your free Teachable trial and launch your first course in minutes.