How Tortoise Labs helped Elaine go from full-time employee to full-time founder in two months
“Nick breaks down all of the pieces of starting and going full time into sizable, manageable chunks. Everything felt doable.”
Elaine found customers, clarified her offerings, and set fair prices
Within two weeks, Elaine had nearly booked out her schedule
After two months, Elaine keeps hitting and exceeding revenue goals
The founder
Elaine is a PR and grant writing consultant, and the founder of Pen Name. She helps startups and small businesses in Maine get the earned media attention that will allow them to grow.
The dream
Her dream was calling, but Elaine wasn’t in a position to take a risk.
Elaine wanted to say yes to her dream of freelance PR and grant writing but wasn’t in a position to take the risk of leaving a stable, full-time job. She knew she had strong writing and research skills, but didn’t think supporting herself and her family with her own business was a real possibility. When Tortoise Labs referred Elaine her first client, she started a business part-time, unsure if it would be sustainable.
“You think of a startup and you think of a bachelor who's living with four roommates, doesn't have any responsibilities, and definitely doesn't have kids,” Elaine says. “You never really think of the entrepreneur in their 30s and 40s.”
Elaine was passionate about helping businesses grow their sales and exposure through earned media, and was getting good results for her clients, who wanted long-term relationships. Elaine could see a path toward making her monthly revenue goal. But as a new parent with a mortgage and a full-time job, she wasn’t in a position to take chances.
“Doing PR full-time was just such a far-off dream,” Elaine recalls. “I'm a very cautious person. And I'm not in a position to take a lot of risks.”
As clients kept coming, Elaine realized she needed to get serious about the possibility that she could pursue consulting full-time, and that she would have to dive in fully or give it up if she wanted any sense of work-life balance. But she was already busy, and it wasn't easy to formulate the next steps all by herself.
She remembers thinking, “Okay, Elaine, you're either going to grow this business to your monthly revenue goal where you can completely leave your other job, or you just need to scrap it because it's taking up too much time and your weekends are gone.”
She needed to know that stepping into her new role as a founder wasn’t a gamble, and she needed support in carving out the next steps.
“Doing PR full-time was just such a far off dream,” Elaine recalls. “I'm a very cautious person. And I'm not in a position to take a lot of risks.”
The process
Finding customers, defining offerings, and increasing startup income
When Nick Rimsa, owner and product designer at Tortoise Labs, checked in and offered to help Elaine transform her business into something sustainable, she was ready to jump in. Elaine’s business had started with clients coming to her, and she knew that wasn’t a reliable, consistent way to find customers moving forward.
Nick helped Elaine start the process of finding clients by exploring questions like:
Who is your customer?
What do they want to accomplish?
What is your monthly revenue goal?
How many clients can you support right now?
“What I needed was not necessarily support with how to do my job, but how to work on my business,” says Elaine. “Nick showed me that it might not be as risky as I thought it would be.”
Together, Elaine and Nick clarified the type of customer Elaine was looking for, where she could find that customer, and how to talk to that type of customer. Nick offered personalized strategies, clear steps, referrals, and even pep talks as Elaine put in consistent effort to take on new clients and reassess her goals.
“Nick is a lot more than support, or an advisor at the 1,000-foot level. He’s very invested in making sure that I succeed, more so than someone just saying, ‘Oh, I hope you do well, here are some resources.’”
Nick and Elaine worked together to outline how many clients Elaine would need to replace the income from her full-time job — and how to find those clients. They also defined a new pricing structure that reflected the value Elaine brought to her clients. When Elaine hit her monetary goal two months in a row, she felt ready to go full-time.
She wouldn’t have been able to drop everything she was doing to support herself and her family — she had needed to work toward her goal in small, consistent steps.
“Nick breaks down all of the pieces of going full time into sizable, manageable chunks. Everything felt doable. It just reduced a lot of panic.”
The results
“I keep hitting and exceeding revenue goals”
After getting clear on who her customers were, how to reach leads, and how to structure her offerings in a way that brought in consistent income, Elaine felt confident in her decision to take her business full-time. She also quickly saw results.
Her schedule was nearly booked out within two weeks. “I keep hitting and exceeding revenue goals,” she says.
Elaine was already delivering quality work to her clients. Now, she feels confident speaking to her strengths — and she prices her work accordingly.
“I’m really focused and I know exactly what differentiates myself and my business. And that’s great because right now, I don’t have a lot of time,” says Elaine.
Elaine knows she can use Tortoise Labs as a resource if she ever needs support, referrals, or assistance with any transitions in her business. In the meantime, she plans to continue perfecting her systems to maximize the amount of quality time she can dedicate to each client. She also plans to carve out space every month for clients working in the startup space.
“It's exciting, it's edgy, it's like you're always learning,” says Elaine. “I love learning about the next startup, the next thing that is happening, and having them come to me.”
Elaine proved to herself that it was possible for a new parent with a mortgage and a full-time job to become a full-time founder of their dream business — and she’s proud she did.
“I'm so surprised at where I am with just a couple of weeks under my belt full time in my business. I would not have necessarily thought I could use my skills to be my own boss, my own founder and CEO. I'm proud that I took a chance on me.”
Ready for your own success story?
Find out next steps to take your startup from a daydream to a sustainable, profitable business.