Bonus #13

Ellen Yin20min

Ellen Yin

00:06

Hey, welcome back to another bonus episode of cubicle to CEO, the podcast where we ask successful entrepreneurs, the business questions you can't google. I'm your host, Ellen Yin and today I have some bittersweet news to share with you all that may come as a shock to some of you. But after a year and a half, I have decided to close down my clubhouse at the end of next month.

Ellen Yin

00:30

And for those of you who are new to our community, the clubhouse is my women's co working space here in Oregon, that I officially opened the doors to in 2022 and this decision was not easy. As you can imagine, it was very emotional, it was something that I had sat with for a few months before finally coming to this decision earlier this week. So I am still very much in the moment processing everything. So I don't have a whole lot of insights to share with you in this moment, as I may in a few months or even years down the line. But there is one clear lesson that has come to light in this decision that I feel is important to share with you today because it may be encouraging to some of you walking through a similar season in your life. So let me back up for a second and give you a bit of context.

Ellen Yin

01:24

If you are new to our show or community and if you're curious about the origin story of the clubhouse, how it came to be why I decided to open a co working space here in Salem, and all of the details that went behind actually building an operating this business. I will link below an in depth episode that I recorded earlier last year that covered more of that starter story. So that again will be below in the show notes if you want to listen. But as far as what brought me to this decision today, it ultimately came down to me having to be really honest with myself that I have overextended my capacity to run two businesses two completely separate businesses because the clubhouse is legally a different entity than Cuba hold a CEO in this media business.

Ellen Yin

02:14

So to be able to run two separate businesses the way that I wanted to, and to see both of them to their full potential. I just don't have realistically the resources time or energy to do both to the best of their abilities right now. And it took me a long time to really face that truth. Because I'm ever the optimist, I'm sure many of you are. And I always want to believe that I can do all the things right that I have the capacity to push, push push to be able to take care of everything. And while the clubhouse was by no means a huge time suck in terms of the maintenance, and our members are incredible. So like all of that operationally wasn't a huge commitment. But to grow that business and for that business to live up to its full potential that I wanted it to, to create the best possible member experience to be able to invest time in setting up events and to market the business. And to spend a lot of time there myself, I simply did not have the resources or capacity to do that, as a sole staff member for that particular business.

Ellen Yin

03:33

Now on my media side on in this business, I have an amazing team to support me, I've years of experience a lot more capital, like funding available to me from over five years of building up this business, right, we've built up a healthy savings, all of these things that have set the foundation up for it's totally different when you start a brand new business that is essentially a baby. And when you think about any new thing, right, and I'm not a parent, so I can only really say this from observation. But as you can imagine, a friend of mine is kind of going through this right now. So it's top of mind for me, when you have a newborn, they take up a lot more of your around the clock, diligence and attention than your 17 year old may. Right, your teenager is probably pretty self sufficient to stay alive at least have most of the time and be able to do a lot of things on their own. Whereas with a baby, with a newborn, you really have to be its sole caretaker around the clock for it just to exist for the baby just to function. And so it's kind of the same way with businesses when you start a business. It will take a disproportionate amount of energy and time at the beginning to really build it to a place where it can be self sustaining.

Ellen Yin

04:53

And when I signed the lease for this space in the fall of 2021 to open up the space in early 2022 I cannot anticipate where I would be right now in this moment in time, as I'm recording in the spring of 2023, which is that, you know, less than 12 months ago, we completely shifted the business model for my main business, from a primarily coaching and education based business, to a media company. And even though this business, my main business is pretty well established, you know, we're over five years now, into this journey, switching the business models still requires kind of a lot of the same nuances as starting a new business, you have to rebuild the foundations, your offers, reestablish your clientele base, create a lot of new systems and processes.

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