You're listening to Cubicle to CEO, Episode 244. Hey, friends, welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Ellen Yin. And today is another solo episode, I'm excited to take you behind the business with me as we review and recap the last 90 days in my company.
We're going to be covering the highlights things I've learned and taken away from this last quarter. But I wanted to quickly preface this episode by saying, if you are a longtime listener of our show, then you are probably used to hearing our quarterly income reports. Basically, every 90 days, we would come on the podcast and share with you exactly what our business earned, spent and profited in the last 90 days. And I wanted to let you know that we still plan to release an income report this year, it's just going to be on a yearly cadence.
So a summation of the entire year of 2024, at the end of this year, instead of every quarter. The reason we're doing that is well, a number of things we've been sharing our income reports now for five years on a quarterly basis. And that's a huge lift on our end. And it's very important to us to create financially transparent content and to lead the way with that. And we are very proud of the advocacy work we've done over the last five years to contribute to that mission in that endeavor. So, if you haven't listened to all of our past income reports before, I highly recommend you check out the playlist that we've curated for you in the show notes, or you can just type in your browser, ellenyin.com/incomereports. And you'll be able to catch up on all of the past income reports on our podcast.
But this year, we felt like you know, as our business matures, we want to be able to zoom out and look beyond just 90 days to 90 days when it comes to our financial decisions. So I wanted to experiment this year with actually waiting until the end of the year to share all of the numbers and details on the financial metrics side. However, that said, I still wanted to be able to check in with you every 90 days every quarter and share what's working in our business and what we've learned and what we're celebrating. So that's kind of what these quarterly reviews are going to look like for this year. And who knows maybe in 2025, we change our mind and decide to go back to quarterly income reports. But I wanted to let all of you loyal listeners know what to expect for this year in terms of these types of episodes. Alright, let's get into it.
Welcome to Cubicle to CEO, the podcast where we ask successful founders and CEOs the business questions you can't google. I'm your host, Ellen Yin. Every Monday go behind the business and a case study style interview with the leading entrepreneur who shares one specific growth strategy they've tested in their own business, exactly how they implemented it, and what the results and revenue were. You'll also hear financially transparent insights from my own journey bootstrapping our media company from a $300 freelance project into millions in revenue.
Before I get into the highlights of our quarter one this year, I just wanted to give a quick shout out to the guys at Goonsville clothing. So the cofounders Petros and Carlos I met at CU Denver when I went there to do a live podcast recording for their undergraduate entrepreneurship, and business students at the Jake jabs Center for Entrepreneurship. We actually did publish that Q&A as a bonus episode on our podcast bonus episode number 53. So if you haven't yet listened to that one, we'll make sure again to link that below in the show notes. Or if you're watching on YouTube in the YouTube description.
But anyways, I am a huge advocate and supporter of student run businesses and young entrepreneurs. So they gifted me this sweatshirt, which honestly my husband has been wearing a lot more like I feel like all the cool swag I get he ends up stealing and wearing so anyways, I'm glad I got a turn today, but I just wanted to give a shout out and thank you. It always means so much to me when any business honestly shares their products and services with me. But especially, I feel like I have a soft place for students and just emerging entrepreneurs. So thank you to the guys that Goonsville and if you guys want to check out their clothing line, not sponsored at all just wanted to give them a shout out. It'll be again below in the show notes or in the YouTube description box.
Alright, let's get into the highlights of our first quarter of 2024. So when I think about these last 90 days, it's really been heavily defined by traveling. Holy moly, I don't think I have traveled that much in years like the last time where I feel like I was gone every other week was probably in 2019 or maybe 2018 even. But honestly even then I don't know if it was in such close proximity to one another. So I feel like I would go on a trip and then be back for literally a handful of days sometimes non't even a full week and then be on the road or on a plane again to my next destination.
So I did a ton of traveling and the first quarter, half of the trips were for business. The other half was for, you know, personal things that I had planned. We had two birthday trips planned in there for two of my close friends. And there was something else I think, too, that happened in quarter one that was more of like a personal trip, but oh, yeah, a retreat, I guess it was kind of a personal and business thing. It was, it was technically a business retreat. But it was in a beautiful place, and Mexico, and, you know, really focused on recentering and relaxation. And so I don't know, I kind of thought of it more as a personal trip in some way.
So anyways, lots of trips that happened in the first quarter. And I spoke actually at four different conferences. So the Renaissance Women's Summit in Nashville, the Creative Educator conference in Dallas at South by Southwest, it wasn't technically a South by Southwest sanctioned event, but it was during South by that week in Austin, and one of my companies in my angel portfolio Cherub, they were hosting this pop up shop. And so I got to speak on one of the angel investing panels, as well as record a live podcast for Cubicle to CEO. So again, if you haven't listened to that episode, either, we'll make sure to link it below in the show notes.
But I got to talk with the founders of Esker. And that personal and talk to them about their journey raising more than a million dollars as women from investors and how they spent that money. So, you know, we often talk about making money, but very rarely do we talk about the flip side of the coin, and that's spending money. And honestly, a lot of your business's success is dictated by your ability to manage that cash flow and to spend wisely and on the right things and at the right time. So if you've ever been curious about that side of business, and what does it look like? Like how much are people actually spending on team and on marketing and on product development, and all these other types of things, if you're curious about that type of data, I definitely would recommend listening into that podcast episode with Shannon and Bridgitte.
So again, it'll be linked below if you want to take a listen. So that was that third event. And then the fourth event I already mentioned was when I did a live podcast recording at CU Denver for those entrepreneurship students at the Jake Jabs Center for Entrepreneurship. So busy, busy first quarter, I was gone a lot. And while I really loved you know, all of the memories, and I never regret a trip, like when I look back at any traveling I've ever done in my life, whether for business or personal. I never regret a trip that I've taken right the memories and getting to spend time with people in person. It's just something that you really can't replicate or fabricate in any other settings.
So no regrets there. But I do feel like I've learned some valuable things and reflecting on how much time I spent away from the office. So I'll touch on that later in this episode when I'm talking about what I learned from this quarter, but just wanted to kind of like tease that little caveat there. Another huge highlight of quarter one was I got my business formally valued. So I actually worked with a firm to formally valuate my business valuate value, I don't know I never know the correct term. But anyways, it's an indicative valuation is what the actual report is called.
And I talked about this process, more in depth in one of the episodes we're releasing for our C-Suite members on our private podcast. So I kind of walk our C-Suite members through the type of methodology that we used to value the business, what that looked like, why I'm valuing the business what I plan to do with this information, this was a really huge milestone for me, because, you know, when I first started this business back in 2018, there was zero part of me that thought I would ever sell this business or that I would, you know, be building an asset that I could even sell. And so I felt really proud going through this process and realizing I have created something that is worth money like outside of me actively just being in the doing right.
So it's graduated, I guess, like my business has graduated beyond just being a job for myself, or even a job for the employees on my team. It's actually its own living, breathing entity that has a value outside of me and that can be, you know, acquired by another company. So that's really exciting. I'm in no rush necessarily to sell my business or anything of that sort. But I think just even having this information is illuminating. It shows me where we've really driven value in this business to make it worth more and what we could be doing better to continue to increase the value of my business. So that one day, if I decide, you know, it's time to move on to the next chapter that I have something really solid that can be, you know, passed on to the next steward, I guess, the next steward of Cubicle to CEO.
I think for myself, though, you know, and I've reflected on this quite a bit, if I were to ever sell the business, it really would be coming from a place of wanting to stay on with the brand, just in a different role. So getting to stay on as the voice of the podcast and continuing to have these weekly conversations with you all is honestly the highlight of the work that I do. And so I wouldn't want to step away from that. And so being able to find the right strategic partner where we could plug into, you know, their business and their ecosystem and actually get to take this show to the next level would be my ideal dream. But like I said, I'm staying open to all possibilities, especially because now I have this, this clarity, with, you know, where my business stands and what we can do with it. But I'm not in any sort of timeline, rush timeline, or having any sort of expectations around what that has to look like. I think staying curious, staying open is the best way to approach this.
All right, looking at my notes, the other huge highlight of quarter one was selling out our first ever retreat, and making six figures in profit from it. So six figures, once all of the cash is collected, we gave most of our retreat, attendees custom payment plan, so we'll be slowly collecting on those invoices over you know, the next eight months until the end of the year. But that's great, actually, because it gives us steady cash flow that we can depend on throughout the entirety of this year. And I'm just really excited that we were able to create an offer of high value that people really wanted, even though at the beginning, it wasn't selling how we anticipated.
And I think I actually posted a teaser about this, I recorded a full length episode about this for the C-Suite where I talked about, you know how it flopped with our waitlist and exactly what we did to turn the ship around and actually sell out this retreat, and make six figures in profit, not just revenue profit, which I always want to highlight because everyone knows events can be money sucks. And so it was really important for me that if I was going to do an in person event, especially on such an intimate level, that it was really a worthwhile use of my time and my team's time and resources.
So I cover you know, that whole process of how we sold out this retreat on the private podcast for C-Suite members, but I did post a teaser of that episode on our public podcast. So if you want to give that a listen, I'll make sure to link that below in the show notes as well.
So all I'm all lots to celebrate from quarter one. And now we kind of want to get into some of the lessons and the takeaways that I had and reflecting back on the last 90 days. So I kind of already you know, had alluded to that the traveling while very meaningful in the moment and you know, when looking back on it, it still was a huge drain honestly on on my time on my energy especially. And I think because I traveled so much in this last quarter I realized how inefficient taking so much time away from my regular routine in the office was like it really slowed down my momentum in terms of revenue generating activities.
And so even though events again are such a great way to make meaningful connections and to further your brand awareness and you know, all these other wonderful things that come with going to in person events, I think I was saying yes to quickly when invited to be part of an event because it feels like a huge opportunity right? But I think what I really came out of this realizing is there's also an opportunity cost and we've talked about this before in the podcast right?
Every yes you say is 1000 no's to other things that may be important to you but I don't think it really struck me how much of an opportunity costs I was taking or allowing until I really you know was just back to back constantly on planes and realizing all of these other things are falling to the wayside because I'm not accounting for all of those, you know, travel days or even when I'm back just accounting for it may take me a full 48 hours to feel revived again from the energy drain of just being on all the time with so many people and long days, you know, in the airport and on a plane so I realized I was kind of getting distracted in my business honestly by had a number of events I was doing.
And in conversations with friends, I realized that I've just graduated to a different season of my business. You know, in the first few years of my business, especially between 2019 to 2022, when I was really getting into the speaking world, speaking was such a great visibility vehicle for me, it really allowed me to build a much bigger platform both for myself and for Cubicle to CEO. But I think in 2024, now, I've kind of graduated to this point where I no longer need, or rely on events to be able to boost my brand visibility or credibility, like I've put in the work for the last four years to really do that through events. And at this point at this stage in my business, and again, it could change again down the road.
But at this stage in the business, I feel like events really are not even events speaking really has to be more of a revenue generator for me to say yes to because otherwise, I'm taking days or weeks away from my business, when you kind of add it all up, that could have been better spent on another project, that would have made a greater impact at the end of the year, right to our revenue to our cash flow to our profits.
So I think what I realized is that I can no longer go to in person events and speak at them unless there's like a really clear, strategic reason for why I'm doing it or unless I'm getting paid minimum five figures to speak. And luckily, I have been very lucky that the majority of all of my speaking engagements over the last few years, have all been paid. So it's not like I'm not doing paid speaking engagements already. But I think I have to up that bar for myself and accept that, you know, I may need to triple quadruple my speaking rates, because I've earned it, quite frankly, and I know the value of the IP that I bring to an audience when I share, you know, if I'm doing a Keynote or workshop, I know the transformation and the results that can come from the information I share. And I know what I would charge for people to have access to that same information in a different setting.
And so for me, I need to take that into account and, and just make peace and realize that because I'm charging much higher rates going forward, that that may exclude me from many opportunities that I'm invited to. And that's really hard as someone who, you know, loves to be around people at events and always gets excited about the potential of something right. Like I want to say yes to everything. But I'm realizing more and more just how important it is to say no, in fact, I cannot remember who I heard this from. But it really stuck with me, I love this so much and I've been trying to put this into practice more, keeping a no journal, and actually writing down everything that you say no to, and then reflecting back on it months down the line, maybe a year down the line. And seeing what those no's, actually opened up space for you to do what positive results actually came from all the no's that you said.
I just think that's such a fascinating concept. And I've been trying to do that more is like taking pride in saying no and and again, making peace with saying no, even to great opportunities on paper. So that's kind of my take away, there's got to weigh up charge my speaking rates, be okay with that excluding me from certain things. And I was having lunch with my friend Kim Kaupe, who's a past podcast guest. That's actually how I met her originally. And it was it was during South by week. So when I was in Austin for the chair pop up shop, we had lunch together on my last day there. And we were talking about how sometimes it's difficult, you know, when we kind of graduate from a certain season of our business, and we do kind of step into that next level version of ourselves.
So for me as a speaker, this next level version of myself that charges minimum five figures, multi five figures for paid speaking engagements. And I was telling her, you know, it's hard because a lot of times, the invitations that I received to speak at events come from my peers come from my friends in this industry who I adore and want to support and want to show up for and I understand logically that for some of their events, especially depending on the scale of their events, it may not be realistic for them to pay my full speaking rate in the same way that let's say a huge corporation throwing a large industry conference would be able to or have the the available speaker budget to afford.
And I was talking to her about like, how do we balance wanting to support our friends without compromising, you know our own boundaries and needs as a business of what we can dedicate and allocate our time to. And Kim share this really simple approach, but it was so brilliant. She basically told me that in her own life, she allocates what she calls like a friend favor, I think she said, like once a quarter, so like four times a year, she allows herself to offer a discounted speaking rate, or maybe even to speak for free at an event that a friend is hosting. But she only allows herself to do one a quarter for a year.
So once those spots are taken, they're taken. And this has made it much easier for her to be really clear on what she says yes and no to because let's say someone, you know, invites her to speak at an event, and they're not able to meet her full speaking rates and all of the, you know, other requests that she may have as a professional speaker. And so in a case like that, you know, she would say, hey, I actually have an open friend favor this quarter, would you like to take it like I can do it for you, because I have this space available.
But let's say that spot was already taken, she could then easily be able to say, hey, you know, as much as I would love to be part of your event, unfortunately, my friend favor for this quarter has already been taken. But I have another one available, let's say in September, would you like to be booked for that opening instead? And maybe that friend takes her up on that offer? Or maybe, you know, it doesn't make sense, the timing for them to you know, have another event in the month that she happens to be free.
But it allows the decision fatigue to be drastically reduced, right? Because you're not having to individually judge case by case and say, oh, is it worth it? Should I do it? Should I compromise on this again? Or, you know, should I really stick to what I set for myself as my new standards, you know, in this up leveled version of myself, she doesn't have to wonder because it's very cut and dry. She's able to give back to her friends in a meaningful way. But she is very disciplined in how she does. And so I love that concept. And I wanted to share it with you all because maybe that would be helpful to some of you as well. I know I certainly am borrowing it in fact, there is an event that I'm speaking at this summer that I offered the friend favor to him. That's my one spot for the summer. So I'm you know, I'm all tapped out now.
But it allowed me to say yes to something that I know is going to bring me joy to be part of, and then I'm excited to support my friend in but it's not something I would normally, you know, be able to do all the time at that rate. But I can do it for this one event. And so anyways, just wanted to share that because that was one of my favorite learnings and takeaways from this last quarter. What else did I want to share from this quarter? I think the last thing I'll just touch on is in looking at my actual P&L reports, even though we're not going through the full numbers, I thought I would just share like an interesting insight from one of the things that I observed in, in looking at my again, my profit and loss statements for the first three months of this year.
So overall, this year, there were net positive changes in two income categories. So far, one unsurprisingly is speaking because like I said, I've been doing a ton of speaking, and I am doing paid speaking engagements. So my speaking income has increased year over year compared to first quarter 2023 Oh, actually, I said two income categories. It's actually three. So I take that back. It's three income categories. So speaking as one, digital product sales is the second one.
So this one I really want to touch on because in 2023, that was our first full year operating as a media company with that business model. And so what that meant was if you listened to our Q4 2023 income report, again, it's linked at that income report playlist that I referenced at the very beginning of this episode. About 50% of our revenue last year came directly from brand partnerships and sponsored content. So that was a huge shift in our business model compared to 2022 especially to 2021 when education and digital products were the primary you know, revenue sources for the business so it kind of flip flopped in brand partnerships and sponsored content at the end of the day is more like a services based business than I would say, a digital product space business even though the medium through which we are feeding out sponsored content is all digital, like our podcasts and our newsletter and social media. It's very custom right each partner that we work with, we are writing individual emails for creating digital content for social content, add content, whatever it may be.
And so it's definitely more, I would say services intensive or like labor intensive than a digital product that you create once and then you just sell over and over again. So anyways, I say all this, I give that background because it's been really refreshing you guys in first quarter of 2024. To kind of ease more into our roots, again, of bringing that education arm of our business back to the forefront. That's not to say we are slowing down on brand partnerships at all, we're not.
But it is to say that, you know, we had kind of basically put the brakes entirely on our digital products and education arm of our business last year, like we weren't running any active funnels, we turned off all of our ads for, you know, things that we use to drive traffic to, we weren't really focused on product dev for new educational products, because we were so focused on just trying to get our feet rooted in this new business model. And really going hard after brand partnerships. So we had to stay super focused last year, this year, because we now have a rhythm and a strong base with brand partnerships, we can now you know, reallocate some of those resources back to bringing our educational products to the table.
And that's been really exciting. Because the really cool thing about digital products is in courses, you know, memberships, anything of that nature is that you can count on a much more dependable source of cash flow. So like with digital products, I call them like daily income streams where you can get paid every single day right? Over the last month or so especially I think, every single day that I have logged in to Kajabi or Pay Pal or whatever stripe, there's been a new payment every day. Now of course, there are little micro payments, right like maybe you sell a $27 template here, you get $100 recurring subscription charge there. But it's every day new payments early ending in our account.
And that cycle of being able to bring in that cash faster, so that you have more wiggle room to utilize that cash for growth. It's so refreshing to have that again. Whereas with brand partnerships, you can get large sums of money, but the sales cycle is much longer. And then the payment terms are also much longer. You know, some brands have like net 30 net 60 payments, or you get 50% of your project fee up front and then 50% upon completion and maybe a campaign runs for like three months or six months.
So it could be a long time between when you first signed the contract to when you get paid the full amount whereas with digital products, it's completely the opposite, right? You can get paid the full amount the day they buy in like one to two business days later it shows up as a deposit in your bank account. So it's been really fun to bring back digital products in a way bigger way this year.
And we're still not done like there's a funnel that I'm planning to launch this year finally for perfect podcast pitch which I have been toying with mentally in my brain forever, but it's finally coming this year. I'm really really excited about that. And then like at the time of this recording in two days, we're going to be hosting our first live teaching masterclass in I think it's been probably two years since we hosted our last true like teaching masterclass, so not being like a sales webinar masquerading as a masterclass like a true value giving tactical teaching masterclass. It's our Grow Your show seven insider secrets to dominate downloads and climb the podcast charts masterclass.
So, it's a podcast growth focused masterclass for obviously podcasters, or aspiring podcasters. And we're really excited at the time of this recording. And I'm sure I'll touch on this more in our Q2 review. But at the time of this recording, we are almost at 250 people who have bought tickets to this live paid masterclass. And we're excited once you know, we've done this live masterclass to then turn this product into one of our evergreen on demand trainings that people can purchase. So thinking through like how I want to utilize and leverage that how I want to create a funnel for that. Anyways, that's kind of really exciting to see that come back into play.
And then the third category that we've seen a net increase in year over year compared to quarter one of last year is events. And a huge piece of that is because we decided to host our first in person retreat, that retreat that we sold out for six figures like I mentioned earlier, so all of the deposits that we collected for that retreat, obviously played a huge role in spiking our events income and then with this live masterclass, you know, all the tickets that we're selling, is also helping to contribute to that.
So it's just really exciting to look ahead and see, okay, how can we really lean into virtual events to continue to grow our customer base, and by proxy, our audience as a whole, I really strongly believe I've said this so many times in so many different places, but I really feel like it bears repeating. It is so powerful to build an audience of buyers, not an audience of just freebie seekers. And I see that time and time again, even in the performance of our brand partnerships. I think oftentimes, when we work with brands, you know, we do have a pretty sizable audience.
But compared to many other media companies out there, especially, it's a relatively tiny audience, you know, like, between all of our different platforms, we probably reach about 100,000 people. That isn't a lot in the grand scheme of, you know, even some newsletter companies that reach like 2 million readers a month. And so understanding that, but also realizing that if those companies have built their audience sizes based purely off of free content, sometimes that doesn't always translate into sales and conversion.
And the one thing I think we've done right, as a media business is build an audience of buyers build up people with us over the years by providing them consistent value in both free formats, like our podcasts that we've stayed consistent with, for at this point, what is it almost five years now, it's going to be five years this summer that we've showed up every single Monday for you guys. And we do that as a free resource. And we have no plans to change that.
But we also make available paid opportunities for us to go even deeper, and to provide more value for you through our membership through the C-Suite through our digital products through live events, like the one we're hosting on Wednesday. And so I feel like that's the thing that we've done, right and because of that, you know, again, it pays off when we do our partnerships, because people trust our recommendations, and they know that they can count on us that our word is good, and that what we share works. And so it's cool to lean into virtual events and kind of start thinking through how can we use this more as an acquisition channel for audience building for community building.
So definitely have some fun virtual events, and even potentially in person events lined up for the rest of 2024. So you'll have to stay tuned, make sure you're on our email list, our list is always the first to find out. Actually, I would say the C-Suite is the first to find out about any like paid offerings or things that we're releasing, but the email list or email list is definitely second in line for that. So if you're not part of our free newsletter community, join at the link in our show notes. We'll make sure to include that link for you. We send out weekly case studies every Wednesday and we love to provide extra free value for you guys every week through the newsletter.
So anyways, that's a wrap on everything quarter one, very proud of the last 90 days optimistic and staying open and curious to what the future could look like.
A lot of things moving behind the scenes so super grateful for you all thank you so much for your support your continued support through the years. And if you're new here, thank you for tuning in for the first time. Make sure you hit that subscribe button if you're watching on YouTube. If you're listening on a podcast player, make sure you hit follow so you don't miss our new weekly episodes every Monday. Thanks so much. I'll see you in the next episode.
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