I don't get paid for likes. I get paid for books.

How Sonthia Coleman turned 25 years in fashion into a tech-forward coaching business on Pensight

Most creators think the hard part is getting attention. Sonthia Coleman would tell you that's the easy part. The hard part is turning attention into a booked call, and that's exactly the gap she closed.

Sonthia is a creative technologist in New Orleans and the founder of Opulnes. She spent 25 years in fashion merchandising and marketing, working with names like Moët Hennessy, Nike, Patricia Nash, and the New Orleans Saints. Often times she was the brand's first Black woman buyer. Then COVID hit the intimate-apparel world she'd built a career in, and the question became simple: what now?

Her answer was to stop choosing between her two skill sets and combine them.

Don't pick one lane. Build the one only you can build.

Sonthia didn't pivot from fashion to tech. She fused them. She learned Python on her own, partnered with Girls Who Code, and now teaches students from third grade through college how to code, using fashion as the on-ramp. She studies cloud computing and spatial design. She "vibe codes" her own tools and even prototyped an app for her students.

Her advice to anyone starting out reflects this:

"Pick something to start with, but don't end with it."

For the Solo Strategist, this is the whole game. You are not one job title. The business that works is usually the one that stacks your unlikely combination of skills into something nobody else can copy.

The channel system: every platform has one job

A lot of creators burn out trying to be everywhere with the same energy. Sonthia doesn't. She runs each platform for a specific purpose, and keeps the message consistent across all of them:

• Pinterest is her mood board and vision. It's where the brand direction lives before anything ships.
• Instagram is the vibe check. People look you up here to confirm you're real. She treats it as a living portfolio, not a popularity contest.
• LinkedIn and Substack are where the vision becomes words. Her newsletter, The Fashion Code, runs on both, plus a Pensight blurb that links back out.
• TikTok is short-form reach, mostly repurposed Substack snippets cut for that audience.
• Pensight is where it all converges. Every other channel exists to point here.

The discipline isn't in posting more. It's in making sure all of it says the same thing and routes to the same place. As she puts it, she's "funner on Substack, but still talking about fashion tech." Same person, same message, different room.

Why the booking link is the only metric that matters

Sonthia has a one-liner that should be taped to every creator's monitor:

"I don't get paid for likes. I get paid for books on Pensight."

This reframes the entire content grind. Likes, views, and follower counts are signals, not income. The job of a post is to move someone one step closer to clicking a link and booking time with you. Her mother's version of the same idea: it only takes one person to click that link and book you.

That's the problem Pensight is built to solve. Instead of duct-taping a scheduler, a payment processor, and a notes doc together, Sonthia runs bookings, payments, call recordings, and client notes in one place. When one of her clients, a fashion illustrator, is traveling through Guatemala, Sonthia can still pull up every note and recording and speak to the work, because it all lives in one system.

Her first paying client came from being findable, not famous

When we asked where her first Pensight client came from, the answer wasn't a viral moment. It was groundwork.

She'd been on LinkedIn since 2007, building real connections long before it was a content platform. She does her own SEO, using AI tools to keep her LinkedIn and Pensight profiles in sync and current. A fashion-tech company found her through that SEO trail on LinkedIn, followed the link to her Pensight page, and messaged her to book a consultation.

One booked call turned into a contract conversation. On the call, with the company's two developers listening in, her 25 years of merchandising plus her new tech fluency landed so hard they offered her developer access and a larger engagement on the spot.

"The first time I put my Pensight link up, I got calls. I got booked consulting calls."

The lesson for net-new creators: you don't need to go viral. You need to be findable by the right person, and you need a link that turns interest into a booking the moment they're ready.

She's candid about the numbers, too. With larger-budget corporate clients, hitting $10K months came relatively easily, and she's crossed that mark before. Right now she's deliberately restructuring toward mission-driven work, teaching girls to code and building community programs, which means rebuilding that revenue on a different foundation. She's open about being in that rebuild rather than pretending the line only ever goes up:

"We've achieved it in the past. We're going a new direction, and I think that's okay to say."

The advice she'd give her younger self: don't wait

We closed by asking what she'd do differently if she started today. Her answer came fast and didn't stop:

"Don't wait. Don't wait for the camera. Don't wait for the perfect look, the branding. Somebody out there needs your ideas, needs your advice, needs your spin, needs your spunk. So don't wait. Handle it like a boss."

She practiced what she preaches. She shot her latest brand photos in a friend's living room and used AI to edit in a new wardrobe. The point isn't to lower your standards. It's to stop letting "not ready yet" be the reason you're not earning yet.

What creators can take from Sonthia

• Stack your skills. Your edge is the combination only you have. Sonthia's is fashion plus tech.
• Give every platform one job. Reach, vibe check, vision, words. Keep the message consistent and point all of it to one place.
• Optimize for bookings, not likes. A booking link beats a like every time. Make it easy to find and impossible to miss.
• Be findable. Consistent, current profiles and a little SEO did more for Sonthia's pipeline than chasing virality.
• Don't wait. Start with what you have. The upgrade can come after the income does.

If you have a point of view worth paying for, the tools to monetize it directly already exist. You don't need a perfect setup. You need one link people can book.

Start building on Pensight. It only takes one person to click.