Anyone else know “that look”?
The look on your face that your loved ones now recognize as “OMG I have such a great idea for a new business” - it comes with a slight buzz and a whole lotta mad scribbling.
Sometimes that look is met with genuine excitement. Sometimes, it’s met with rolled eyeballs. Kinda depends on your past record of implementation, success, and ensuing chaos levels.
Ruth Soukup’s hubby has learned to recognize that look. It’s happened a few times.
From Mommy Blogger to Brand Owner
She started as a mommy blogger way back in 2010 when she had two toddlers at home. Then, each time she added to her multi-million dollar online education business, which includes a few brands - Living Well, Spending Less, Elite Blog Academy, and Do It Scared.
And one day, after reading Ryan’s book… it happened again.
Ruth was out for a run, pondering what it might look like if she offered physical products to her audience. The answer came to her like a bolt of lightning, the whole plan downloading right into her brain.
She knew she could move FASTER with her new brand, Thinlicious… if she didn’t have to figure it out on her own. That’s when she joined the Capitalism Incubator. Ruth crushed it on Pitch Week in May and launched two weeks later.
How’d it go? Ruth hit her goal for the whole quarter in the first 24 hours.
But lest you think, even for a second, that someone with a Midas touch track record like Ruth’s must have always lived on top of the world… nope.
A Story of Hope
In fact, if you’d asked Ruth Soukup when she was in her early 20s whether all of this was possible, she would have laughed. Except that she wasn’t doing much laughing back then. She went through a horrible depression and attempted suicide multiple times. Hospitalized for two and a half years, she was full-on Girl Interrupted. She had therapy of every kind, including electroshock therapy - and she almost died. One attempt left her on life support with less than a 10% chance of waking up. She lost all hope.
But one doctor said something that actually helped. “I know I can’t tell you it’s going to be okay. You have no reason to believe me. I just want for you to let ME hold the hope for you right now, since I know you can’t hold it for yourself. I will hold that hope for you because I know there’s something better for you.”
Sometimes, we need to borrow someone else’s confidence.
Given that she’d lost her friends, gotten divorced, and filed for bankruptcy, she couldn’t possibly have known that one day she’d become such an inspiration and help to others. Fast-forward to today, and it’s hard to even imagine that such a positive, powerful person could ever have fallen into such complete despair.
Why Keep Building?
With all Ruth Soukup has already created, why start something new? She’s already accomplished so freaking much. Plus, she was on Good Morning America and is a best-selling author. She also retired her hubby. So, why keep going? Silly. If you’re reading this, you know how we entrepreneurs do… there’s always something new we want to build, always another hill to climb.
What she built along the way will surely catapult Thinlicious into the stratosphere. Namely, she built her platform. Starting in 2014, the bootstrapping Ruth’s Elite Blog Academy has taught entrepreneurs how to create a business by growing an audience first.
Thinlicious
Ruth followed her own advice and built a great and hyper-engaged audience. So, when she launched Thinlicious’s first phase, a digital challenge, they wanted IN. And when they heard about what else she has planned, they begged her to build it NOW.
Thinlicious is a bit of a departure from what Ruth’s built so far. It sprang from her weight loss journey - one in which she ditched 40 extra pounds. Anyone over 35 knows that’s pretty freaking amazing. Ruth’s friends asked how she did it, of course. And she started helping them by creating a program - it’s what course creators do. But what’s next is a line of food products that will help them.
The thing is, Ruth Soukup is not a one-woman show. She’s got a team. The team has goals. Hitting those goals leads to profit sharing. Adding a whole new business to the business… well, that could definitely impact everyone. She presented her plan to the team and gave them a week to mull it over. When they came back, everyone was all in.
Again, the first piece for Ruth was building the list. The goal was to build that list to 10K people by the end of June. The next milestone they’ll hit is 25K on the list by the end of September.
Ruth Soukup Builds Smart
How? Well, Ruth’s in the Capitalism Incubator and following the Owner’s Model, of course. As both the CEO and the face of her business, she knows her best contributions to the brand are vision, strategy, and content creation. She doesn’t read emails; she has someone else do that for her so she stays out of the weeds and in the owner’s seat.
From that seat, she’s already planned where she’d like Thinlicious to go. With a huge and ever-growing audience, a scalable product, the ability to bring in influencers and leaders, this brand is deliciously sellable. Given the niche, a 10-figure exit in the next few years would not be one tiny bit surprising.
Now… we had to ask Ruth’s best advice that she’d like to pass on to you. So, here it is:
Build your email list. There's so much that gets said about TikTok and a million other tactics. But your best plan, no matter where you get in front of new people, is to give them a great reason to sign up for your email list. Use whatever platform you want for reaching people - but get them on your list. (And your SMS list, too!)
And if you need to borrow a little confidence along the way, we here at Capitalism.com have oodles to spare - and you’re welcome to borrow it.
In fact, we're on a mission to make one million new millionaires by 2028. We'd love you to be one of them!
If you’re ready to take the next step in making that business that put “the look” on your face…
We've got a FREE course that'll walk you step-by-step to build a million dollar brand that can create generational wealth while also making the world a better place. Get started on your road to $1 million today.
