Freelance to Founder

Stuart Draper once worked as a plumber for his brother-in-law. Now he’s the founder of a $4 Million business providing a digital marketing curriculum to university professors and their students. Makes total sense, right? Well, maybe not. But it makes for a great tale.

After feeling stuck at her corporate finance job, Brittney Castro broke out on her own to start her own financial planning firm. Now she works tirelessly on growing her personal brand making $500K/year.

When Andrew Warner started Mixergy, he had just come away from a $40 Million business sale and was anxious to help aspiring entrepreneurs thrive. Despite starting with zero business plan in mind, today Mixergy is a healthy 7-figure business and in today’s episode, you’ll see how it all unfolded—and continues to unfold—for Andrew and his small team.

We have a super founder to introduce to you today. A great story of a military wife. An extremely busy and motivated wife and mother who decided to mix her two passions - education and photography - into a highly successful photography business that she can run and needs to run from anywhere. This is the story of Courtney Slazinik, founder of clickitupanotch.com - from 3rd-grade teacher to six-figure photography blogger

On today’s show, we’ve got an Australian software developer, who’s just over 1 year into his biggest endeavour yet. While he’s successfully built and sold one company in the past, he’s right now growing his latest creation - Content Snare. And it’s been an emotional rollercoaster - even beginning with him having to re-think his original business idea.

What if you discovered, that your best bet for growth, success and even peace of mind was to change gears from building a big company brand to establishing a strong healthy personal brand. Meet Kaleigh Moore, freelance copywriter and former founder of Lumen Ventures - Now, a prolific content creator, podcaster and business partner to Paul Jarvis and his ‘Creative Class’ program.

As a kid, Marc von Brockdorff was obsessed with the idea of having an online business. He’s continued to overcome startup struggles by building and testing various online products and businesses - including working as a freelance developer. Today, he’s the co-founder at Hotjar, one of the web’s fastest growing companies.

In today’s episode, we introduce you to David Tendrich and Lou Levit, partners in business and in life. In 2009, they both decided to leave college to start their own freelance business. Now, this power couple have grown from just the two of them to over 20 employees and thousands of dollars in revenue across the globe with their two very distinct businesses - Unexpected Ways and ReliablePSD.

Justin Jackson was a shy kid growing up. Of course, you might not guess that from his twitter profile where he self-identifies as an internet stuntman. After taking his first real job as a customer service rep, Justin quickly learned there was more out there for him. Today, he's a lifestyle entrepreneur, author, product developer, and all-around interesting character.

After seven years of working in a cubicle, Sarah Morgan realized she had a major problem: she hated her job. Her biggest fear was that she'd wake up one day and realize she had worked her whole life at a job she didn't enjoy. That's when she decided to take her freelancing full-time and has since built a thriving brand & blog.

Mike McDerment had the entrepreneurial bug early on. In second grade, he built a video game and told everyone he was going to sell it. Today, Mike he's the CEO of Freshbooks—a tool for freelancers with nearly 2 million active users.

Cynthia Johnson wasn't exactly a perfect fit for public school—after being homeschooled she found the entire thing a bit restrictive. But the same autonomous, adventurous, entrepreneurial mindset that may have caused trouble in school, helped her build a multi-million dollar agency and personal brand.

Jake Jorgovan has started a lot of businesses—from recording local punk rock bands in high school to design websites for multiple clients. But Jake recently learned that if he wanted to scale to something bigger than his own expertise, he had to rethink everything.

We're just a week away from Season 4 of 'Freelance to Founder' and we've got some incredible stories coming your way this season—from Emmy-winning designer Chris Do, to entrepreneur Cynthia Johnson, "internet stuntman" Justin Jackson, full-time blogger Sarah Morgan and lots more!

From the company that brings you 'Freelance to Founder' comes an all-new weekly podcast called 'My Freelance Life.' The show tells the story of Andy, a desk-jobber-turned-full-time-freelancer. In this quick episode, you'll hear the trailer for the all-new show.

A quick message to everyone listening to 'Freelance to Founder' from co-producer and Millo founder, Preston.

After realizing he wasn't cut out for freelancing or agency life, Russ Perry built a multi-million-dollar business on the back of a crazy idea: sell unlimited graphic design services for unbelievably cheap.

Tom Ross used to be a design blogger getting hundreds of thousands of views every month. But he quickly realized almost none of those visitors really cared about him, his brand, or his business. That's when Tom pivoted to build Design Cuts—a decision that would lead him to build one of the most engaged (and profitable) design communities on the web.

When Nathan Barry dropped out of college a few years ago, he never dreamed he'd soon be running a company that generates over $800,000 every month in recurring revenue. But that's exactly what has happened. And in today's episode we learn how he did it.

Joanna Wiebe thought law school was the right path for her. But after a day—yes, literally one day—she realized she made a terrible mistake. Since then she has built one of the most well-known copywriting brands on the internet: Copy Hackers.