Her Online Business Makes Over $1M in Revenue — How She Did It

In 2017, finance expert Jamie Trull quit her six-figure job at Coca-Cola. The company was undergoing a major restructuring that would have required her to move overseas. Trull, who was pregnant with her second child at the time, decided not to uproot her family to move for her job.

Instead, she decided to start her own business.

“I had no idea what I was going to be doing,” Trull told Entrepreneur in an interview. “I did not have any kind of grand plan.”

Related: Her $4,000-a-Month Side Hustle Landed in Home Depot: ‘Not Bad for a Niche Product’

Trull, a certified public accountant (CPA) with over a decade of experience in finance at firms like Ernst & Young, landed on a business offering her financial expertise to small business owners. She called it Balance CFO. She began with $5,000 and a mission to help small business owners earning less than $1 million annually understand their finances to grow their companies.

Trull spent her initial investment on software to help her collect emails and manage an email list, technology equipment and educational programs to help her learn how to run a business effectively.

As her business grew, she pivoted from offering 1:1 coaching services to teaching an audience on Facebook and YouTube about financial literacy. At the time of writing, she has over 35,000 YouTube subscribers and over 6,000 followers on Facebook, and describes Balance CFO as “fully an education-based company.”

The business draws revenue from brand partnerships and affiliate income, as well as sales of digital products like financial fitness courses and toolkits to help small business owners understand their finances.

In 2019, Balance CFO achieved $100,000 in revenue, growing to $500,000 by 2021 with the addition of digital products. In 2024, the company hit the million-dollar revenue mark. This year, it is on track to surpass “over a million” dollars in revenue.

“From a revenue perspective, we will be over a million this year, and that’s really exciting for us,” Trull said. “Our profit margins are over 50%. I’m really proud of that.”

Related: This Mom’s ‘Scrappy’ Side Hustle Started in Her Garage — Now It Makes $5 Million a Year

Trull is transparent that her primary motivations for starting her own business were the freedom to be more present for her family, set her own schedule and pay the bills.

“I started my business with the hope of being able to be there for my family, instead of in a cubicle or in a corporate office somewhere,” Trull said.

Trull released a book earlier this month with Simon & Schuster called “Hidden Profit,” which goes deep into strategies small businesses can use to maximize their earnings, even with a limited budget.

Here are three hacks she shared for small businesses to maximize profitability.

1. Understand pricing and profit margins

Many small business owners understand their profit margins in totality, but not necessarily on a product or service level, Trull explained. She gave the example of a winery owner who was profitable, but not by a lot, and they were trying to figure out why they weren’t bringing in more money.

“I helped them break everything down by the type of wine, the type of bottle they sold it in,” Trull said. “They realized that their biggest seller was actually losing money. That’s more common than we think.”

Related: How to Choose the Right Pricing Strategy for Your Small Business

Trull says that there may be a need for price adjustments and a closer look at the direct costs involved in offering a product or service to become more profitable. She advises small business owners to ensure they have updated their prices to account for rising costs and inflation.

2. Spend wisely

Trull encounters business owners who are hesitant to overspend. While she agrees that the consideration is important, she thinks it is more important to take stock of what a business is spending money on and evaluate if those measures are providing a return on investment (ROI). For example, high marketing costs could be worth it to help bring in more customers.

“One thing I’ve seen happen is people will cut costs because they’re trying to increase their profit, but they cut costs that were actually meaningfully contributing to their bottom line,” Trull said.

She recommends that small businesses understand which costs are worth it and invest more heavily in areas with a higher ROI.

Related: This Simple Personal Finance Hack Started as a Joke — But It’s Actually Helping People Save Money, Experts Say

3. Value your time

In many of the businesses Trull works with, the owner is doing a lot of the labor, and they aren’t valuing their contributions as a cost.

“I’ll see owners who are doing work that they could hire out for $15 an hour, but they think they’re saving money by continuing to hold onto those tasks,” Trull said.

She pointed out that if these owners were to free themselves from tasks that could easily be outsourced, they could then spend their time on high-level tasks that bring in new sales or strategies. Trull currently employs five people full-time, including a chief operating officer and a customer success manager, as well as several contractors.

“Our business has grown by leaps and bounds since we brought in the right people,” Trull said.

Related: Starting or Growing a Business? Here’s How to Know When You Should Hire Your First Employee.

In 2017, finance expert Jamie Trull quit her six-figure job at Coca-Cola. The company was undergoing a major restructuring that would have required her to move overseas. Trull, who was pregnant with her second child at the time, decided not to uproot her family to move for her job.

Instead, she decided to start her own business.