If you love a scrappy startup story, today’s case study is a true standout. I’m joined by Daina Trout, co-founder and Chief Mission Officer of Health-Ade, the fastest-selling Kombucha brand in America, currently carried in 60K stores across the country and doing an impressive $250 million in retail sales annually. Far from an overnight success story though, we’re taking a trip down memory lane to the brand’s early days in 2013, when they were quickly running out of money and only carried in 10 s...
Nov 14, 2022•48 min•Ep. 168
If you’re a long-time fan of Shark Tank, you know the iconic line “and for those reasons, I’m out” when a Shark bows out of a potential deal. It’s rare however, that the entrepreneur seeking an investment actually turns down a Shark, but that’s exactly what today’s guest did. Kim Lewis is the CEO and co-founder of haircare brand CurlMix, appearing on Season 10 of Shark Tank with her co-founder and husband and ultimately rejecting Robert Herjavec’s offer of $400,000 for 20% of her business. Despi...
Nov 07, 2022•50 min•Ep. 167
Welcome to another one of our quarterly income reports! If you’re a new listener of the show, we highly recommend going back and listening to our previous income report episodes to get a better understanding of why we started sharing this information 4 years ago as part of our advocacy for financial transparency. If you want to check out our previous reports, we’ve created a curated playlist for you here: https://ellenyin.com/incomereport If you are a returning listener of these income reports, ...
Oct 31, 2022•51 min•Ep. 166
On the show today we have our first guest who has taken a company public. Mike Evans founded GrubHub in his spare bedroom and grew it into a multi-billion-dollar household name. Today’s case study looks at how GrubHub grew their revenue by 300% in one week after switching from a subscription based model to a transactional model, and how you can evaluate which revenue model would create more value in your own business and attract repeat customers. Since leaving GrubHub post-IPO in 2014, Mike more...
Oct 24, 2022•44 min•Ep. 165
You know we're obsessed with leveraging other people’s audiences to GET VISIBLE and increase your sales, and today’s guest has mastered this practice. Kelly Mosser, host of the Aligned Success Show, joins us to unpack how her signature offer jumped from $24K in revenue in Q2 to $52K in Q3 simply by guesting on other people’s podcasts with intention. So it’s not just about being interviewed on someone else’s show, but what you do before, during, and after the episode airs that really matters. Thi...
Oct 17, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 164
How do you scale a luxury 1:1 service without sacrificing quality, pricing integrity, or burning out? Today’s case study looks at how Alice Park, co-founder of the National Association of Professional Child Photographers (NAPCP), co-founder of Atlanta-based Park Studios and founder of Alice Park Photography and Creativity Camp, switched to a volume-based, experiential business model that doubled her studio’s revenue from $500,000 to 7 figures in less than 2 years. Instead of shooting a handful o...
Oct 10, 2022•58 min•Ep. 163
We're excited to share our very first merger case study on the show - specifically, how Emily Hall, a presentation designer, and Heather Sager, a speaking coach, merged their two existing successful businesses into one - all in 108 days - that’s barely over 3 months, to put things into perspective. The Speaker Co. is a presentation company focused on helping entrepreneurs create and deliver obsession-worthy presentations that make people fall head over heels for them and their offers. Anchored b...
Oct 03, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 162
Jaclyn Johnson is a serial entrepreneur who launched and sold two-self funded companies before the age of 35 - her last exit was for cult favorite brand Create & Cultivate, which sold for $22 million. Create & Cultivate serves a community of more than 1 million women and is best known for their highly aesthetic in-person experiences and conferences featuring celebrities and influential leaders you know and love. Today’s case study details how they sold out their largest conference ever -...
Sep 26, 2022•46 min•Ep. 161
Today’s case study dissects how to create, sell, and deliver a day rate package, also commonly known as a VIP day, that you can get paid between $2,500 to $4,000 for a single day’s work. Our guest is Becca Luna, a high school dropout who created a multiple six-figure web design business and now runs a million-dollar educational empire teaching driven creatives how to build 6 figure web design brands with no college degree, no coding knowledge, and no previous experience. Becca created her websit...
Sep 19, 2022•52 min•Ep. 160
Today’s case study with guest Stacy Tuschl reveals the one critical number you need to identify and align your entire team around to grow your business - and no, the number is not your revenue or profit goals. Stacy is the founder and podcast host of Well Oiled Operations, a company helping small business owners around the world create systems that promote team accountability and eliminate the common challenge of CEOs becoming the bottleneck in scaling. The critical number is the focus of a one ...
Sep 12, 2022•51 min•Ep. 159
Welcome to our brand new solo episode series: Behind the Business! In these episodes I will be giving you some insight on projects we are working on in real time - and a highly requested one so far has been to share how I launched my women’s coworking space here in Salem, Oregon at the beginning of 2022. This is my first venture into the world of commercial real estate, and it has been a wild ride these first 7 months, so let’s just dive into the episode!Links mentioned in this episode: https://...
Sep 05, 2022•58 min•Ep. 158
Today’s guest is one of my favorite people - and biggest cheerleaders of our community - actor Julia Campbell Karnes. I first met Julia through her sister, Marty Fulford - my real estate agent and also friend. 2022 happens to be my 10 year high school reunion AND the 25th anniversary of comedy classic “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion”, so I thought, what better way to celebrate both occasions than inviting Julia - who plays mean girl Christie Masters opposite Lisa Kudrow & Mira Sorvin...
Aug 29, 2022•54 min•Ep. 157
Today’s guest needs no intro - Rachel Hollis is a three-time New York Times bestselling author with over 100 million podcast downloads. This Austin mom of 4 is also the founder of RISE Conferences, the #1 personal development conference focused entirely on women. When Rachel texted me to ask if I wanted to do an episode together, it was an easy yes, but I wanted to be really intentional about using this opportunity to deep dive into a specific, actionable business strategy that she hasn’t shared...
Aug 22, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 156
Get 3 months of Kajabi for only $99: https://ellenyin.com/kajabi99 OR try Kajabi FREE for 30 days with this link: https://ellenyin.com/kajabi Imagine if your ability to perform the core function in your business suddenly became impossible due to an illness. That’s exactly what happened to our guest, Lady Kellsie Moore, a top video presence coach for entrepreneurs and speaker whose TMJ-D diagnosis prevented her from being able to speak for an entire year. In today’s case study, Kellsie shares her...
Aug 15, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 155
Today’s case study will change how you approach selling forever. Linda Sidhu is a list-building and quiz funnel expert who gives us a detailed behind-the scenes breakdown of her Quiz Lab launch, which generated $70,000 in revenue by using a personality quiz funnel as a leads generator. Linda leans into her pharmaceutical sales background where she mastered the DiSC personality types to segment her email list by 4 distinct personality types, and cater her sales emails and offers to their unique b...
Aug 08, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 154
Thinking about launching a podcast show? You’ll want to take notes on today’s case study. My friend Dana Snyder is joining me to walk us through her creative launch plan that debuted podcast, Missions to Movements, at the #29 spot on the marketing podcast charts - all on a scrappy $800 budget. Dana is the founder of Positive Equation, a company transforming nonprofits’ online donor experiences with innovative digital marketing solutions. Dana has worked with brands like American Idol, Sports Ill...
Aug 01, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 153
In this episode, I share my Q2 2022 income report and look at how I made $132,635 in my business over the last 90 days. This covers all of the financial activity, revenue, expenses, and profit that my business made over the course of April, May, and June 2022. If you have been in our community for a while, then you know we have been sharing income reports since 2019 - almost 4 years - in an effort to increase financial transparency and literacy for online businesses. Make sure you go back and ch...
Jul 25, 2022•40 min•Ep. 152
After 3 years, I’ve decided to permanently close the enrollment doors to my 12 month group mentorship program - Cubicle to CEO - (just the program, not the brand - don’t worry) on August 5th. Through this program, we’ve helped hundreds of service providers, coaches, and freelancers work with their dream clients and make their first $10,000 income month. That’s why we’re taking this final month to celebrate a few of our Cubicle to CEO students who recently reached that big milestone, including to...
Jul 18, 2022•53 min•Ep. 151
After 3 years, I’ve decided to retire my signature 12 month group mentorship program - Cubicle to CEO - (just the program, not the brand - don’t worry)! We’re hosting one last launch at the end of July, before closing enrollment for good. Through this program, we’ve helped hundreds of service providers, coaches, and freelancers work with their dream clients and make their first $10,000 income month. That’s why we’re taking this month to celebrate a few of our Cubicle to CEO students who recently...
Jul 11, 2022•51 min•Ep. 150
I’m in the interview seat today in this replay of my conversation on the Kajabi Edge Podcast. I take you through the full evolution of my business over the last 4.5 years, from my start as a freelance social media manager to building a marketing agency to then pivoting to digital courses and programs and now a media company. We get into advice, finances, and so many other chapters of my journey I’ve never told in a podcast format before. In this episode, you’ll also get to borrow one of my best ...
Jul 04, 2022•45 min•Ep. 149
Get studio quality and HD video for your podcast by recording in Zencastr! Use our link zen.ai/cubicletoceo or type in the code 'CUBICLETOCEO' to save 30% off your first 3 months of any paid plan. It’s always easier (and usually more profitable) to upsell an existing client than to acquire a new one. Yet, most marketing strategies focus on how to get new clients, rather than nurturing relationships with your existing clients. Today’s case study shows how coach Tiffany Coyle, founder of Virtual C...
Jun 27, 2022•40 min•Ep. 148
How do you send a steady stream of new people to your website who are actively searching for the content you write about or the products and services you sell? Today’s case study answers that question. Elise Armitage is a good friend of mine and the creator of What The Fab, a travel and lifestyle blog founded in 2012 helping women find fabulous in the everyday. Elise shares with us how she used SEO - short for search engine optimization - to 8x her website traffic from 20,000 monthly pageviews t...
Jun 20, 2022•59 min•Ep. 147
Ashley is a brand designer and photographer who spent the past decade in the agency world crafting big brands for big businesses and Fortune 100 companies like Toyota. She recently left her career and the corporate world behind to help small businesses build big brands, too. Her passion is helping people live theirs. And she believes that anyone with a dream or passion for something should have a real chance at it. But what they may not realize is that they're going to need more than a logo to d...
Jun 13, 2022•41 min•Ep. 146
This week’s guest is a business strategist and friend I absolutely adore. Hannah Murphy used to work 7 days a week as a pinterest + blog agency owner, fighting through the online noise of all the ways she should spend her time, only to find her to-do list was ever growing while her revenue stalled. Hannah realized creating a productive schedule wasn't about doing more tasks quickly, but rather doing the right tasks effectively, and less overall. Today’s case study reveals how Hannah gradually re...
Jun 06, 2022•59 min•Ep. 145
In today’s installment of the $10K month series, we are going to talk about 5 key shifts that you can implement TODAY to take the suck out of sales calls. So if you are someone who always dreads getting on a sales call (also known as a discovery call), this is going to be for you! If you are a freelancer, coach, or service provider in specific, who relies on sales calls to turn leads into paying clients, these 5 shifts will massively increase your sales conversion rate. This means you will be ab...
May 30, 2022•20 min•Ep. 144
Interested in sponsoring this show or trying podcast ads for your business? Go to zen.ai/ellen and fill out the contact information so Zencastr can help you bring your business story to life. Sign up for a 2-week free trial with Norby: https://ellenyin.com/norby This week’s case study reveals how Girls Who Code increased enrollment in their programs by more than 200% during a global pandemic, a jump from 1600 to 5,000 students enrolled that brought their total students served to over 500,000. We...
May 23, 2022•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 143
Nicknamed the “creator to the creators”, Diane Armitage is the powerhouse behind many well-known million and billion-dollar brands like Bob Proctor, Jay Abraham, and the creators of Chicken Soup for the Soul. Despite an impressive thirty years as an entrepreneur with several successful businesses she ran behind the scenes already under her belt, Diane was still scared to put her face out there and start her own personal brand. After joining our mentorship program, Cubicle to CEO, Diane finally t...
May 16, 2022•44 min•Ep. 142
Download our Perfect Podcast Pitch Template: https://ellenyin.com/perfectpodcastpitch https://www.instagram.com/cubicletoceo/ Redeem your free 30 day trial to Pretty Simple, the #1 leads tracking app built by solopreneuers, FOR solopreneurs: https://ellenyin.com/prettysimple Download the transcript for this episode at https://www.ellenyin.com/blog/include-this-1-easy-thing-in-your-next-podcast-pitch We have received hundreds, if not THOUSANDS of podcast pitches over the years we have been podcas...
May 09, 2022•16 min•Ep. 141
Join our next Paid To Create Challenge: https://ellenyin.com/paidtocreate Today’s case study features artist Linda Yi, founder of Panda Cub Stories. Linda became her own patron and went from making $250/month on Patreon to reaching her first $10K month with Panda Cub Diner - an online course she first created inside our 3 day Paid To Create Challenge that teaches Chinese food lovers how to LOVE making healthy and authentic Sichuan food at home. If you, like Linda, also sell a service or product ...
May 02, 2022•56 min•Ep. 140
In today’s installment of the ‘Make $10K Month’ podcast series, we are going to be discussing why not knowing your numbers is actually costing you your chance at realistically achieving the income goals that you set. So what most service providers, coaches, and freelancers do when they set a new monthly revenue goal for themselves is they simply choose a number arbitrarily - whether its $10K, more, or less - and then they just go about their marketing as they always have, hoping and praying that...
Apr 25, 2022•23 min•Ep. 139
