You're listening to cubicle to CEO episode 269. Hey everyone, welcome to our Quarter 3, 2024 review. Let's dig into what happened here at Cubicle to CEO in the months of July, August and September, 2024.
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 in a case study style interview with a 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 worth you'll also hear financially transparent insights from my own journey bootstrapping our media company from a $300 freelance project into millions in revenue.
This may be our shortest and sweetest Quarterly Review ever, simply because of life. Life really took center stage in quarter three of this year, and in particular, my attention and focus this summer really revolved around preparing for and competing at Mrs. America.
This was a big life event for me. I've never competed at a national level for a pageant. In fact, this year was the first time I had ever competed in a pageant period, but I had the extreme honor of representing Oregon as Mrs. Oregon America at the national level, at Mrs. America, and this was a 10 day competition in Vegas. And you know, it's interesting looking back, because the competition happened at the end of August, right? But we left for Vegas in mid August, and last year, in August, I got married, so two summers in a row, I had a really big life event happen in August.
And even though the physical competition only took 10 days of my time, my attention was really shifted to preparing for this, because there was so much preparation that went into these 10 days, from a shopping perspective, packing perspective, and then actual competition, preparation, right, walking, practice, interview, practice, all of the things and so looking back at July and August, I really give myself a lot of grace for letting myself really be focused on this once in a lifetime experience, and knowing that the business did take a little bit of a backseat during the summer.
So that all said, July started off with a bang, because we came home from Europe July 4, so we flew back home on Independence Day, and I decided very last minute that I wanted to host a special flash sale. I actually, I don't think I've ever hosted a, a sale before for the Fourth of July. So this was my first time doing that, and then also it was one of my first times experimenting with these pop up offers.
So I've done this a little bit with our 12 days of Christmas sale last year at the end of 2023 but the difference is that with this pop up sale, we actually limited the quantities of the offers to an extreme. So there were certain offers, for example, that only one unit was made available for purchase. So it was truly a very limited quantity sale, and we just kept things super simple. I think we had, can't remember the exact number, but you know, somewhere in the range of five to 10 total offers that were posted on a sales page.
And like I said, they were all limited in quantity, but some were extremely limited, with only one unit available. And some had, I think, up to 10 spots available. And I think that was actually the largest quantity available. So truly very, very scarcity, kind of urgency centered, and it was only available for, you know, the weekend of Fourth of July. So I did a full in depth debrief of the sale. What offers sold really well? Which ones didn't? How I marketed it, what the sales page looked like, anything I would do different. All of the details that you would possibly want to know about my experiment with these pop up offers is on our private podcast, the C-Suite.
It's episode eight, so if you want to check that full thing out, where we get into all the data, all the conversions, all of the revenue and the strategy behind this sale, go check out the link in the show notes where you can subscribe to the C-Suite and listen to episode eight for that full launch debrief. But that was a really cool experiment. I'm glad I did it, and it affirmed my love, actually, of pop up offers and getting to use them as a playground to get really creative and test new offers that I'm not sure I want to offer long term, or if I want to expand and build it into something bigger.
But it really gives you this flexibility to just kind of put something out there and see what kind of interests. What your community has. It's almost like getting paid to do market research. And you guys know, I'm a huge fan of pre selling. In fact, our paid to create challenge, which is our live course creation challenge, is centered all around that, right, getting paid to create your first online course. And I think that pop up offers kind of offer that same opportunity to more seasoned entrepreneurs and educators who are wanting to maybe test new types of products in front of their audience and seeing what people will pay for. So loved that just wanted to shout that out.
Also, in July, I went to Vail for my friends, Hannah and Maritza, Thrive retreat, which was incredible. I got to speak there. I got to reunite with some of my good friends there, especially Matt Budden and Haley Burkhead. And so that was a wonderful weekend, and it was one of the last two trips I did before my big Vegas trip. So very, very fortunate to have been able to been a part of that.
And then also in July, I got a pitch accepted for a Business Insider full feature article, which is incredible. That's probably one of my biggest media features to date, for both myself and the company. It was an article all around women who are the breadwinners in their family, and what that experience is like. And so if you want to read it, I'll make sure to link that below in the show notes as well. But that was a huge honor. So huge shout out to Kamanzi, who was the one who wrote the article and gave me this opportunity. I got to interview with him, and then he wrote this article that got published in August.
So that was a huge honor, and a big win that I want to celebrate from the summer. And then the other big thing in July that was happening, simultaneous to getting ready for nationals and competing at Mrs. America, is we were also getting our house ready to list to go on market. So if you guys follow me on Instagram, you've seen some sneak peeks over the last six or so months of our duplex that's being built. This is kind of our venture into real estate investment.
And if you followed me for a long time, then you already know that one thing I'm really passionate about is using your business to create and or purchase assets that produce income for you outside of your business, right? So real estate investing is something I've been a long time curious student of, but I've never actually really taken the leap to purchase any real estate assets outside of my own primary residence. So finally, this year, we took the leap and decided to build a custom duplex.
My husband and I are going to live on one side, rent out the other for a couple years, and then eventually, you know, rent out both sides and and move on to whatever our next adventure is. But we're not going anywhere. We're staying in town. It's just, you know, we're downsizing by quite a lot in terms of space, and then really using this to get our foot in the door with real estate investing.
Because, as you know, or maybe you don't know, if you've not looked too much into this, but how real estate as an investor, it's in our favor financially to live in the duplex for a couple years and make that our primary residence for a couple years, because the lending terms are much more favorable. You don't have to put, you know, if you buy, like, let's say, a second piece of property, and you already, you know, live somewhere else, you have to put down a much higher down payment. And there are also different lending terms available to you. So making it our primary residence for a couple years first is really going to help us again, get our foot in the door there.
So that's all really exciting, but of course, we have to sell our current home in order to help fund that move, and so that was a huge stressor too over the summer is just like getting everything ready. We had so much chaos going on in the home. Our cabinets were getting redone, and that was a several week project. Then we replaced all the carpets in our home. That was another big ordeal. And then we had to, you know, get everything staged and cleaned and shot all before I left for Vegas so that we can make sure that our listing would go on the market in early August. So that was a really interesting experience.
This is my first time being on the seller side of a home. You know, I've only ever purchased one home before, this home, and so learned a lot, and I'll share a little bit more. Hopefully I'll have an update to share with you guys in our quarter four slash, end of year annual income report about the state of the union in terms of this house sale. But we as of this recording, I'm recording this live in October right now. We should be closing on our duplex next month. So very exciting.
I have more up to date details over on Instagram. So if you're curious about kind of my real estate investor journey, go follow me on Instagram @MissEllenYin, and there will be more live updates there. So that was July, like I said, a lot of it was focused on life stuff. And then we move into August, and August really was dominated by Mrs. America. Yeah, like I said, we left in mid August, and the competition was at the end of August, so basically half the month I was gone in Vegas, because I also extended the trip by a couple additional days, because my mom and my sisters came in for the show as well as my husband.
So we wanted to extend a few days after the competition, have that family vacation together. So it really took up the large majority of the month. But before I left for Vegas, I also actually took a trip to Dallas to speak at and support my friend Haley luckadoos, first in person conference, the females on fire conference, so proud of her. It was absolutely incredible. I met a lot of new people there that I really loved connecting with. So that was an awesome event.
And then, you know, the rest of the month, like I said, was really spent at Mrs. America. And to quote, Taylor, my favorite singer, of course, you know, the August slipped away into a moment of time. It really felt like that. I mean, it just blew by. Most of it was captured on Instagram. So again, if you want to see any of that content, you can go to my Instagram profile.
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Because August kind of flew by. It really, the end of August really bled into September, because what happened is we had less than 24 hours from returning home from Vegas before we were leaving again, this time flying back into Nevada, into Reno, to then drive into Lake Tahoe for our first investor retreat with Soursop Nutrition, which is one of the companies I angel invested in last year.
So that was a really incredible experience, but it was also and you know, life, life is very much this way, right? Some of your best moments happen concurrently with some of your worst moments. And unfortunately, our dog, Charlie, passed away very suddenly while we were actually traveling to Tahoe. So that was a pretty rough, traumatic day, and I won't get into anything further than that, paid, you know, tribute privately.
But anyways, that that was a really tough couple weeks for us, and that was hard to refocus after a summer away from the business getting hit by a hard life event like that, and I think all more reflections probably to share on this at the end of the year, but it really again affirmed why it's so important to build a business where the income generation is not entirely reliant on just you and your manual efforts, right?
Having certain systems or residual income coming in regardless of your direct effort, it re- illuminated to me how important that is, and because of, you know, the last year and a half, two years where we've really been focusing on building up the media business model and doing a lot more of that manual work with both sales and the delivery side of things, with brand partnerships, it was a great reminder that there are other, you know, types of income streams that we've had in our business in the past that we've kind of put a pause on, that need to be brought back like, you know, digital product funnels that sell those low ticket offers that bring new eyeballs into our ecosystem and can be really managed and fed by ads or other forms of paid traffic that don't require as much you know, organic content, organic input.
That was really kind of my big takeaway on the business side, with that life event happening, and then the rest of September also kind of just blew by, because we had two events that kind of were back to back. I think I was only home one weekend at all of September, which was kind of wild. So you know that first weekend in September we were in Lake Tahoe for the investor retreat that I was home for a weekend, and then I was right back out the out the door to bend for my friend Carmen Olings at amplify your life Conference, which I got to host a live podcast panel at. And you'll get to hear that podcast panel recording on our podcast before the end of the year.
So I think you'll really love it. It's conversation all about developing your leadership capacity. So I always love those opportunities to get to talk about something that we don't talk about on the podcast as much or in a different container than we normally do, since most of our episodes are case study driven, as you all know, and so you'll get to hear that on the podcast in the near future.
And then the final conference of September was in Seattle, and this was a new friend of mine, Jessica Chavez, who hosted the Business Ladies of Society annual conference. And I am just so blessed and so amazed by the community that Jessica has really cultivated in Snohomish County, where Bloss, which is the organization that she runs, is primarily based.
And I learned a lot really about community cultivation, I think, just by observing her people and and how she hosted that event. So that was a really cool learning experience. And it did kind of spark this, like itch again for me to host an in person event, maybe in 2025 I know I've had that kind of on the back burner since 2022 when we did that micro event. Let's Get Visible, where we had, like 50 women show up, and it was so incredible.
But since then, I just, I don't know, I've kept meaning to try my hand again at a live in person event, but it just kind of feels really daunting. But I think going to so many events this year and getting to observe different types of events, and I don't know, I think I've learned a lot just passively, kind of again, through observation and seeing the things that I like and do not like at certain events.
And I kind of want to, you know, put that all together into a live event for Cubicle to CEO, potentially in 2025, so we will see. But that that's just kind of, you know, an idea that's percolating in my head. So what else did I want to share looking down here at my notes, oh, in September, also, I found out that I'm a finalist for the Oregon entrepreneurs network entrepreneurial achievement awards. So I'm one of three finalists. The award show is in early November, so I'll find out then who won but it is such an honor.
Someone nominated me for this award, and then I had to apply to move on to the semifinalist round. I got chosen as a semi finalist, and then we did a round of interviews, and then I got chosen as a finalist, and then I had one more visit with some of the judges, and now I'll find out in November, who ends up taking home the prize. But regardless, I'm just so honored that someone in my community, someone in my network, I don't know who to thank for this, so hopefully I will eventually find out who this was, but someone nominated me for this honor, and I'm just so grateful to be recognized for this work, and I'm very passionate about pouring into your local ecosystem and supporting local entrepreneurship, and so it means extra for this to be, you know, recognizing entrepreneurship in Oregon.
So very excited about that. Of course, I will keep you guys up to date on what happens there and then on the back end of the boss conference, Jessica's event in Seattle, I also hosted my second pop up boardroom. So I did my first one in Dallas after the females on fire conference, and then we did that second one in Seattle. And I think that's actually like my favorite new offer that's come out of this last quarter is these pop up boardrooms. So if you're part of the C-Suite, then you already know, we've done several virtual boardrooms.
Essentially, they are meant to provide the opportunity for small business CEOs to benefit from the camaraderie, support and think tank environment, if you will, that corporate CEOs get through a board of advisors, right? If you think about any large company, most large companies have a board of advisors, a boardroom, right? They boardroom meetings, and those CEOs get to lean on their board members for support. We small business owners do not get access to that same level of support, and so we started hosting these virtual boardrooms for our C-Suite members, where we would break out into small groups of, you know, anywhere from three to five people, and we would do hot seat round robin style conversations, where every person would get to share either one challenge or one idea that they're working through, and they would get to workshop it with their peers.
And since everyone runs different businesses and brings different perspectives and experiences and skills to the table, you really get a lot from you know, different people pouring into you from their zones of genius. And so I loved the virtual ones so much, and planning to do a virtual one to end out the year in quarter four. So stay tuned for that, but I wanted to test this idea in person too. So that's why, when I went to Dallas, Texas in August for the Females on Fire conference. I thought, you know, if I'm already here, I might as well extend my my flight just a little bit and see if I can host an in person boardroom.
So I actually like rented out a boardroom, if you will, at a nice hotel, and hosted, you know, a group of I think our first one was like six women for a brunch, and we just got to get together and host that style of Hot Seat peer feedback, and it was so amazing. I loved that first boardroom, and so I want to try it again in Seattle. And had an incredible group in Seattle as well. We sold out, actually in Seattle. We maxed out of our spots there. And it's just really invigorated, like these micro events. I want to keep doing them.
And next year, actually, there's, I asked on Instagram, you know where, where I should take these pop up city boardrooms to next. And you guys came back with so many incredible cities. I've actually not been to, some on my list, or are already on my list to visit. And so I'm thinking in 2025 I'd really love to go to Raleigh for one that's a city I've been wanting to go to for a long time, and I think this would be a great opportunity to do that. I saw New York several times come up on the list, and I like to go to New York whenever I can, honestly.
So that's probably a likely place to host, another city pop up boardroom. I can't remember off the top my head, something, oh, Boise. Boise was another one that I wanted to host a pop up boardroom for. So there are several coming in 2025 so make sure you, if you're not on our email list yet, make sure you join our newsletter so that we can get you first dibs if you want a seat at any of those boardrooms.
But that's been a really incredible micro event to host over the summer, and I look forward to continuing to do that in person next year, as well as bringing in quarterly virtual boardrooms to the community. That's my goal in 2025 is to start doing them virtually. So more to come.
But that kind of sums up, you know, what happened over this last quarter. And I'll have more, you know, numbers to share with you guys in our end of year annual income report interesting trends that I'm noticing throughout this year. I'm not going to, you know, reveal anything quite yet, until we get to that point, but I really encourage you all, if you if you don't, you know, share these public reviews like I do. It's such a cool thing to be able to document what you're going through, the processes, the mistakes, the learnings, and really get to reflect back on your entrepreneurship journey.
Because every 90 days when I do this, I'm always surprised by how much I have forgotten about the last 90 days. Like sometimes we're so heads down, just in the moment doing things that we we forget right to kind of pop our heads up and look around and appreciate and celebrate and remember the things that we're doing and the people that we're getting to do these things with.
And so I really encourage you some way, in some shape or form, document what you're going through every quarter, whether you share it or not, is totally up to you, but I think being able to reflect back on that is such a gift as an entrepreneur, because I don't want you to forget these amazing things.
So anyways, as always, thank you for tuning in to our review, and I'll catch you in our next episode. Talk soon.
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