Browse Case Studies

Wilnau Design is a fully remote web design and digital marketing agency co-founded by Hannah and Greg Wilnau, serving independent financial advisors. Built over ten years starting from a single side project that became her first client and grew through referrals, the agency has maintained a focus on niche selection and lifestyle alignment. Hannah is now engineering a sale while leveraging AI to unlock capacity without growing headcount.

Brian O'Connor built a 40,000-person Twitter following over three years but made almost no revenue, until he pivoted to a recruiting agency placing Latin American project managers into US businesses. He sold $20K of recruiting services off a single Google Doc in two weeks through direct outreach to his personal network, and now operates TalentHQ nomadically with a co-founder and AI tools. His primary growth channel shifted to podcast appearances, proving that reach and revenue are disconnected.

Jan Roos built CaseFuel, a high-margin agency serving 300+ estate planning law firms. After hitting a low point with $240K in debt while running an unprofitable sales organization, he cut costs aggressively and pivoted to a webinar-based funnel that cracked open the market. Today CaseFuel generates $50K/month in profit with a 25-person team.

Level Up Leads is a 73-person outsourced SDR agency generating $6.5M/year in revenue by specializing in appointment setting and cold calling. Founder John Karsant built the business while living abroad (Argentina, then Barcelona) after discovering that cold calling doubled average sale value compared to one-off list-building deals. The company maintains strong retention through compensation tied to client outcomes, radical honesty in sales, and transparent ops dashboards.

Supremacy SEO is an SEO agency run by Travis Jamison, who was featured at the Dynamite Circle DCBKK Conference in Bangkok. Despite industry claims that SEO is dead following Google algorithm updates like Penguin and the Exact Match Domain update, Travis continues to achieve top rankings for his clients.

Linchpin is a service business founded by Damian Thompson, who appeared on the Tropical MBA podcast to discuss his first 1,000 days as a business owner. The company is associated with the location-independent business movement and offers services to this community.

Paul Kortman runs Connex Social, a digital marketing agency. The Kortmans sold their house and 90% of their belongings to become location-independent, traveling with their six-person family to over 30 locations across 25 flights. They experienced a significant revenue loss during their travels but managed to rebound.

ShopifyNinjas is a productized marketing services agency founded by Tristan King that specializes in Shopify-related services. Operating in their third year at the time of this podcast appearance, the company focuses on scaling productized services for e-commerce businesses. The founder shares insights on building and scaling productized marketing services.

Boutique Japan, founded by Andres Zuleta, sells curated travel packages for visitors to Japan. The company is on track to reach $1.3 million in annual revenue. Zuleta shared his story at the DCBCN conference in Barcelona, and has credited storytelling with helping him make sense of his entrepreneurial journey.

Aaron Anderson runs an 8-year-old link building agency that was experiencing negative growth. After paying a failed AI consulting agency nearly $40,000 with nothing to show for it, he started tinkering with Claude Code and built his own AI-powered automation tools, realizing he was building better solutions than the agency he'd hired.

Jay Clouse left his tech startup job to start a mastermind group facilitation business to help early-stage entrepreneurs solve common business problems. The business was discovered through Tropical MBA's listener community and featured in a consulting corner episode. No specific traction metrics were disclosed in this early-stage profile.

Blackbelt Commerce is a productized service business founded by Tristan King. The company specializes in generating business ideas for entrepreneurs, particularly focused on productized service models that can be started quickly with minimal capital. Tristan has appeared on the Tropical MBA podcast multiple times sharing ideas and strategies for starting service businesses.

Firegang Dental Marketing is a dental marketing agency founded by Jacob Puhl that operates through an apprenticeship model. Corey Ames was brought on as an apprentice and is now preparing to take over as CEO, demonstrating a unique business succession and talent development approach.

Sarah Kornblet attended a Tropical MBA seminar in 2012 with 44 other listeners and subsequently became a successful attorney specializing in legal services for online entrepreneurs. The episode explores her journey since the seminar and emphasizes how business ideas develop and mature over time.

HireMyMom is a well-established agency founded by Lesley Pyle that specializes in placing stay-at-home parents as remote workers for companies worldwide. The company addresses entrepreneurs' hiring challenges by tapping into a talent pool of stay-at-home parents who tend to make reliable team members, as demonstrated through case studies like Louise Gray (former Sony executive) and testimonials from founders like Kiri Masters of Bobsled Marketing.

Anna Wickham started Charm House, a marketing agency, after traveling the world for nearly ten years. Despite building the business, she ultimately decided that entrepreneurship wasn't the right fit for her and chose to leave to pursue a traditional 9-to-5 job instead.

Eat My Words is a naming and branding agency founded by Alexandra Watkins that specializes in helping businesses and products choose effective names. Watkins is also an author of "Hello, My Name is Awesome," a book on the subject of business naming. The company works with founders and entrepreneurs to solve the critical challenge of branding and naming new ventures.

Growth Ninja is a performance-based Facebook ads agency founded by Vincent Nguyen in 2015. Vincent built the company after apprenticing with Empire Flippers, leveraging his experience in performance marketing. The episode focuses on Vincent's journey navigating social pressures while building his business, including hiding his college dropout status from his family.

Content Refined is a content marketing agency founded by Madeleine Lambert. She began the business last year and has grown it to $50,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Her growth was facilitated through serendipitous networking within The Dynamite Circle community, where she won an all-expenses paid trip to DC BKK conference offered by entrepreneur Greg Gerber.

Greg Gerber runs a marketing agency that pioneered cryptocurrency payment acceptance, having accepted Bitcoin as payment since 2013. The agency operates in the cryptocurrency space and serves as a case study for early adoption of digital currencies in business payments.