Browse Case Studies

Bazi Hassan is an affiliate marketer who generated $1.1 million in sales revenue over 3.5 years by mastering paid traffic acquisition (primarily via TrafficVents PPV network) and email marketing funnel optimization. Starting with just $5,000, he built a 165,000-person email list and earned approximately $500,000 in commissions by promoting high-EPC offers like MOPE (nophonebiz.com). He is now launching his own coaching platform to serve the customers he surveyed and learned from while marketing affiliate products.

Jeffrey Zorofsky co-founded Witchcraft in 2003, a fine dining-quality sandwich shop that brought seasonal, locally-sourced ingredients to a casual format. The first location generated over $1.5 million in its first year with lines out the door, and the concept scaled to 15 active locations (17 total opened, 2 closed) across 6 years, reaching approximately $20 million in annual revenue with 400+ employees. Jeffrey later became a judge on Bravo's Best New Restaurant and shifted focus to advising food entrepreneurs and businesses.

Buddha Doodles is a creative project turned full-time business founded by illustrator Molly Hahn in 2011 as a daily meditative practice following personal hardship. Starting with free daily sketches on Tumblr and building an email list to 13,000 subscribers, Molly launched a gift shop in May 2013 that now generates $22,000-$28,000 monthly through merchandise sales, prints, cards, and other products. The community has grown to over 200,000 followers across platforms, with Facebook being the primary driver of growth at 160,000+ fans.

Morgan James Publishing is a hybrid traditional/self-publishing house founded by David Hancock that focuses on entrepreneurial authors. The company publishes approximately 135 titles per year from over 5,000 submissions, with a business model that pays authors 20-30% on physical book sales and 50-50 splits on ebooks. Notable authors published include Jeff Walker (Launch), Joel Combs (The AdSense Code), and Brendan Burchard (The Millionaire Messenger).

Grom (formerly U-Creat 3D) is a 3D printing company founded in 2012 that delivers customizable 3D printed accessories through major retailers like Walmart, Amazon, and Overstock. Co-founded by Vincent Vandepel with a 50-50 equity split, the company generated $85K in revenue in 2015 and projected $1.2M for 2016, fueled by large retail partnerships and a unique hybrid manufacturing model combining Asian production with US on-demand 3D printing. Having raised $180K on a convertible note, the founders aimed to raise $750K in seed funding at a $6M valuation to reach $2-2.2M revenue within 18 months.

Mark Gunye is a serial entrepreneur who operates two businesses: Gunye Tumie Inc., a family-run electronics components sales organization processing $2-4 million monthly in transaction volume with 2-5% margins, and Bridge Equity Group, a real estate fix-and-flip and multi-family acquisition business in Northern California. He generates approximately $100-200K+ profit per real estate deal (averaging 6 deals annually) by identifying undervalued properties through MLS listings, agents, and wholesalers, then adding value through renovations and strategic improvements before resale.

Magic City Ford, run by serial entrepreneur Cameron Johnson, is a car dealership in Roanoke, Virginia generating close to $80 million in annual revenue. The business was founded by Cameron's great grandfather in 1938 and has been sustained through consistent hustle and staying power. Cameron has optimized customer acquisition to around $350 per sale by shifting away from traditional newspaper advertising toward a multi-channel approach (50% online, 20% radio, 20% TV, 10% direct mail), with online advertising driving the highest ROI through Google Ads and lead tracking.

Carrie Wilkerson launched The Barefoot Executive in August 2007 as an online brand built on conducting interviews with influential business leaders, positioning herself as an expert by funneling information rather than creating it. Within 4-5 months, she received an inbound call from a corporate direct selling company offering her $2,000 to deliver a 60-minute keynote speech, marking the start of her lucrative speaking career. Between 2007 and 2014, her keynoting and associated revenue streams (book deals, audience contracts, consulting) generated well over $1 million, while she maintained work-life balance by working strategically around her four children's schedules.

Angelo Ramora built Ohio Cash Flow, a real estate investment company that buys distressed properties, renovates them, tenants them, and sells them to passive investors across the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Starting from a failed highly-leveraged approach at age 23 that lost $3-4k monthly, he pivoted to cash-flow focused investing and scaled to 7 closed deals generating $210k in profit by January 2016, with a goal of 250+ deals that year. The company operates two offices with 10 full-time staff and provides end-to-end property management services to investors seeking passive real estate income.

Michael Slavin built US Emerald Energy, an oil and gas exploration company that brings investors into drilling partnerships, after recovering from bankruptcy post-military service. Starting with $203,000 raised from four people (including a stranger met at a gas station) in his first week and a half, he grew the company to $1 million in profit within 3.5 years. The company has operated for over 23 years, maintaining an 85-90% success rate on wells by focusing on PUD (Proved Undeveloped) reserves with 3D seismic data, and profiting from both investor management fees (20%) and direct well ownership stakes.

Joe Fairless left a $150k+ VP role at a NYC ad agency in 2013 to pursue real estate syndication after an initial consulting business failed. He acquired his first 168-unit apartment complex for $6.3M in July 2013, raising $1.3M from investors. Since then, he has scaled to 250+ units and launched a daily real estate podcast (120k monthly downloads as of Feb 2016) that generates ~$2-3k/month in net sponsorship revenue and has raised over $800k from podcast listeners.

Jefferson Lilly co-founded Park Street Partners in 2013 after spending 7 years personally investing in mobile home parks, discovering 20-40% cash-on-cash returns far exceeded traditional real estate. By 2016, he had raised a $5 million fund and personally owned 11 mobile home park communities generating over $100,000 in annual cash flow from his two Oklahoma properties, positioning himself as an industry educator and expert.

Juice Land is a bootstrapped organic juice bar chain founded by Matt in Austin, Texas, with origins tracing back to 2001. As of 2015, the company operates 16 locations across Austin, Houston, and Brooklyn with $10M in annual revenue and 275 employees. Growth has been driven by word-of-mouth and location selection based on foot traffic observation, with a focus on premium organic ingredients and product consistency despite razor-thin net margins of approximately 5%.

Boost and Co. is a venture debt fund founded by Lance Myserbo-Witch that finances early-stage high-tech companies in Europe through loans rather than equity investment. The firm has completed 25 deals totaling $120 million in capital deployed, sitting between traditional bank lending and venture capital with 8-12% interest rates, 1-2% fees, and warrant packages. With $150 million in assets under management backed by pension fund LPs, Boost and Co. offers entrepreneurs a way to preserve equity while accessing growth capital.

Laurie Lane Zucker founded Impact Entrepreneur Center after 10+ years in social enterprise and impact investing to build an ecosystem for entrepreneurs focused on triple bottom line business (financial, social, and environmental returns). The organization operates as a LinkedIn-based network of 10,700+ members across 150+ countries and generates revenue through consulting engagements, success fees on funded deals (typically 5% of seed rounds), retainers, speaking engagements, and mentoring. Laurie is now scaling the model into a physical center combining incubation, acceleration, remote learning, and regional economic development initiatives in Massachusetts.

Beate Chelette built an image licensing business focusing on architecture and interior photography that became the industry leader, eventually licensing celebrity content to 76 countries. She sold the business to Bill Gates' Corbis in 2006 for a significant multiple of the ~$1M revenue and has since pivoted to coaching creative entrepreneurs and women in business, building targeted email lists of 12,000+ and helping clients scale to six and seven-figure businesses.

Regina Pradam founded Tarka Indian Kitchen in 2009 as a quick-casual restaurant concept inspired by the success of chains like Peiwei, offering made-to-order Indian dishes rather than pre-prepared food. Starting with one location in south Austin, the business grew to five units by 2016 with average ticket sizes around $12 and healthy unit economics (27% COGS, 32% labor, 10-11% rent). Regina plans to double to ten locations across Houston, Austin, and San Antonio within 24 months.

Mori is a direct-to-consumer baby essentials brand founded by Akin and Cam, former JP Morgan investment bankers. Launched in February 2016, the company pivoted from a subscription-only model to hybrid e-commerce with repeat purchases, achieving $150k in monthly revenue (annualized $1.8M) within its first full year and operating at a $2M run rate with a goal of $4M in 2017. The company's competitive advantage is exceptional customer repeat purchase rates—the average customer buys 4+ times—with 50% of monthly revenue coming from repeat customers, and recently closed a $2M equity round.

Bancor Network is a decentralized protocol built on Ethereum that solves liquidity problems between cryptocurrencies and tokenized assets through automated smart contracts. The project completed the largest ICO at its time, raising $153 million in just 3 hours on June 12, 2017, with over 12,000 token holders participating. The founder, Yael Hartzal, a 20-year veteran of tech entrepreneurship, emphasized the importance of humility and continuous learning while building a new financial ecosystem.

Alex Kilka built an automated marketplace arbitrage system that identified price discrepancies between eBay and Amazon, scaling it from a side project into a three-year business selling 5,000+ power tools and generating $4,000-$10,000 in monthly gross profit. He shut down the business after Amazon changed its return policy, making inventory management too complex, and has since pivoted to Austin Data Solutions, a five-person consulting firm using data analysis, NLP, and computer vision to solve business problems.