Life throws a lot in everyone’s way; no one is excluded from potential challenges and bumps in the road.
For Ellie Diop, she’d been having a tough time for a while. She’s a single mom who had lost her job and was struggling to find new employment , all while trying to support her kids. When the $1,200 stimulus check came around in 2020, she saw it as an opportunity, and grew that money into something amazing.
Being a single mom comes with a unique set of challenges. Those challenges become even tougher when you’re unemployed.
That’s what happened to 28-year-old single mother Ellie Diop, who lost her corporate marketing job in 2019. She applied to and subsequently was rejected from tons of jobs, struggling through 2020 amidst the pandemic, needing to find a steady means of supporting her kids.
So when she received the $1,200 stimulus check, she decided to use that to launch her own business.
She saw a trend of millennials wanting to start their own businesses, but many didn’t have a background like hers that included prior work experience in marketing and management. She especially wanted to help serve fellow single mothers, as they’re very underrepresented in nearly every industry.
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With her bank of knowledge and desire to help others, she created Ellie Talks Money , an online business coaching service.
She had to keep to her $1,200 budget to get her business started.
She did a lot of research going into this, starting by picking the best platform on which to build her following, which wound up being Instagram.
“I leveraged my experience in the corporate world to get started,” she said in an interview with Business Insider . “I knew I would need good lighting, a website, and a tool to edit my visuals and create my first product.”
And those wound up being her first expenses.
Two ring lights to ensure good quality photos, a domain on which to host her website, and a one-year subscription to Canva pro, a photo editing software, to improve the look of her account.
That was all about $450, leaving her with most of her stimulus check left.
Then came another round of intensive research.
She scoured business and coaching-related hashtags on Instagram for weeks before she ever made her first post.
“It is important to look at who is having success in the field, analyze what they are doing that is working, and identify which needs they are not meeting,” she explained.
“So many business coaches were either men or single women without kids or women in a relationship without kids,” she added. “I did not see anyone who could offer my point of view, so I decided to become that person.”
Once she decided what her content was going to look like, she made her first few posts and had them sponsored so they’d reach her target audience. Her advertising budget was $150, and each sponsored post cost about $25.
She started out offering her services and products for free in exchange for reviews.
“I also did free coaching calls for people for two weeks before launching my paid coaching calls. That is how I got testimonials in the beginning.”
To maintain the audience she’d already built, she would frequently go live on her account, speaking directly to her followers and being present for them. As she explained, “Your customers have to like you, trust you, so they can continue coming back. Show up as yourself.”
But where did all this careful planning land her?
Well, 10 months after starting her business, she’s generated over $1.3 million in revenue for herself. She’s beyond successful.
She is a perfect example of not only brilliance in regards to her marketing know-how, but resourcefulness, having turned a four-figure check into a seven-figure business. She’s an inspiration for young business owners and single mothers everywhere!
h/t: Business Insider
