Introducing Ellie Diop, aka "Ellie Talks Money"
Monetizing her knowledge to recover from personal challenges: How it began.
Ellie Diop had built an impressive career as a director of sales in corporate America. She was making big financial decisions for her company, with serious potential profits and losses on the table.
But like so many other hardworking people, she learned firsthand how quickly the “security” of a traditional nine-to-five can disappear. “My journey to starting my business is different than most people expect,” she says. “I was laid off from my job, and shortly after that, I got a divorce.”
Ellie was suddenly without income — and as a mother of four, she had serious financial responsibilities to live up to.
“I moved back home to my mom's house,” she remembers. “My youngest two are twins, and when I moved in with my mother, they were babies, still nursing. Being in that situation is really what pushed me to start my business.”
Ellie was facing an uncertain financial future. But she knew her skills, experience, and knowledge were valuable. She’d just need to find a different way to monetize them that worked with her new life.
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Getting clear on her value
Ellie started with an activity she now recommends to every participant in her programs — she listed out all the knowledge and skills that make her valuable.
This is a crucial activity that she still recommends to all aspiring entrepreneurs. “Using your skills to build a business really comes down to what I like to call monetizing yourself,” Ellie says.
“What are some things that people in your life are always asking you for advice on? If they need help, other people in this world will probably pay you for that advice.”
After Ellie got clear on what she had to offer, she wasted no time getting started. Taking her $1,200 government stimulus check, she founded an LLC, set up her social accounts, and subscribed to content creation tools like Canva. Armed with confidence in her own knowledge, she was ready to start building her community.
“I wrote down everything I knew how to do, all my experience. What I learned working a nine-to-five was everything I knew about business finance. As a coach, I looked at how to give those skills directly to the marketplace.”
Educating entrepreneurs at scale
Pivoting to online learning
When Ellie first started monetizing her skills she was still selling her time by offering one-hour coaching calls.
“The calls were about $40 for an hour of coaching,” she says. “As a mom with limited time, who was trying to make money, this was not sustainable. I needed to share this information in a more direct way, and reach multiple people per hour.”
Online courses were the clear solution. Ellie started out on e-commerce platform Gumroad, with affordable courses in the $15-20 range.
Nearly 50,000 people purchased courses in her first year alone!
That’s when Ellie realized she wanted to create a more polished, interactive experience, and create better outcomes for her students.
“Those first courses had a special place, allowing my brand to grow quickly. However, considering the revenue I achieved, I wanted to give my students a higher-quality experience. I was grateful so many people purchased from me, and I wanted to level up. I wanted to ensure students got great information and a great course experience. That’s what led me to Thinkific Plus.”
An elevated student experience
Thinkific Plus as the solution.
When Ellie was choosing her new platform, student experience was her top priority. She wanted a solution that would allow her to make her website and landing pages beautiful, interactive, and on-brand.
“I wanted my academy to be a branded experience. I've been able to do that with Thinkific Plus. My early products were just a screen recording of me teaching class. Now, I can interact more, so I’ve rebranded Ellie Talks Money as an academy. It’s a very modular experience, with students taking a quiz to graduate to the next module.”
Now, Ellie’s business education is much more engaging and polished. But these in-depth, highly interactive courses don’t just better support Ellie’s brand — they mean better student results.
“At first, some people might have bought the product but never engaged with it. Now I can focus on ensuring high completion rates because I want students to gain from the information. The courses have become more in-depth. A lot more accountability is built in, and that’s produced better results.”
Growing her brand by empowering students
Business growth with Thinkific Plus
Ellie has earned over 7 figures in revenue since launching her academy Ellie Talks Money using Thinkific!
She’s reached and surpassed her goal of using her knowledge to support her family — while uplifting other entrepreneurs.
“At first, my ‘why’ was focused on finding a way to provide for myself and my family. Now, it’s about supporting other entrepreneurs, especially women and entrepreneurs of color. I want people to see that you can start from challenging beginnings and through entrepreneurship, really turn your whole life around.”
More sales, more students
One key way Thinkific Plus has boosted Ellie’s sales is through branded, customizable landing pages.
“When using my former platform, landing pages were just visit, check out, and buy. But adding video, pictures, and visual interactions before the user enters their card number really adds to their confidence before purchasing. And that’s helped with our conversions.”
A thriving community
Using Thinkific Plus has also grown Ellie’s community, both online and offline. Because her students have a good experience — and see good results — they’re likely to stick around long term and keep engaging in Ellie’s online community.
That real-time social proof has paid off exponentially for Ellie’s brand. “Now, we have more students finishing the classes and applying the content,” she says.
“They’re sharing their results — how their businesses have grown, how they've gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding, how they're making $15,000 a month.”
Personal, consistent support
Thinkific Plus’ industry-leading Customer Success team helps Ellie ensure she gets all the value she can from the platform. Her academy has a dedicated Customer Success Manager, who answers all her team’s questions about how to make the most of the platform.
“Even in our first couple weeks on the platform, our Customer Success Manager helped give us an overview of what we have and how to integrate other tools we rely on, like ClickFunnels and Stripe,” Ellie explains.
“You feel like you're a part of this larger team. Even though this is solely my business, it's nice to feel like my Customer Success Manager and the rest of the Thinkific Plus team are cheering me on.”
Ellie Talks Money’s entrepreneurship lessons
Ellie isn’t just sharing the knowledge she gained in the corporate world — she’s also a self-made entrepreneur. That’s why some key lessons from Ellie’s academy are strategies she relied on when building her knowledge commerce business from the ground up.
Overcoming imposter syndrome
“To beat imposter syndrome, I would advise anyone to double down on that list of all the knowledge and value you offer. It’s about really getting comfortable with and continuing to look at your experience and accomplishments. Saying — yes, I've helped people do this. This is a part of my track record. I'm qualified to talk about it.”
Consistency is the cheat code
Her second piece of advice is to keep going.
“When I was starting, I didn't make a lot of money for the first four or five months. Those moments are when a lot of entrepreneurs stop.” But those challenging months are when consistency matters the most. “It doesn’t matter where you’re starting from. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. It just matters how consistent and disciplined you stay.”
Ellie Talks Money's Favorite Thinkific Plus Features
Thinkific Payments
With Thinkific, your payment experience is just as customizable as the rest of your site.
With built-in selling features like Order Bumps, you can suggest complementary products that your customers might like, offer split payments or subscription options, and let customers pay with whatever method they prefer. Ellie loves using split payment features to make higher-priced courses more accessible, and suggests value-add products like coaching sessions at checkout.
Site Builder
Thinkific's Site Builder lets you quickly build a beautiful, customized website including homepage, product pages, and additional pages containing any content you’d like. As a course creator, you can create on-brand sites (including custom pages) with ease, no coding skills required.
Grow your site like Ellie did with by adding a homepage, beautiful landing pages, an instructor bio page, testimonials page, and many more.
Dedicated Customer Success Team
On the Thinkific Plus plan, course creators like Ellie work closely with the Thinkific Plus Customer Success Team to help make the most of the platform. Your Customer Success Manager is deeply involved with the inner workings of your business and over time, will work with you to set actionable goals and objectives.
Discover how your business can leverage education to generate revenue today.
When your customers win, so does your business.
Platforms like Thinkific Plus are making it easier than ever for growing businesses to build and launch their first online education academy. With specialized tools for content creation, engagement, and analytics for continuous improvement, monetizing knowledge and fostering business expansion is more achievable than ever.
Ready to embark on this transformative journey?
Request a demo of Thinkific Plus and start shaping the future of your business today.
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