The UpFlip Podcast

Matt DuBoise barely made it out of high school. In 2008, broke and struggling to find work, he pulled scrapped wood out of a construction dumpster to build a small chicken coop for his backyard. On a whim, he listed it on Craigslist for $225—and it sold in 30 minutes. The next one sold for $2,000. Fast forward almost 20 years, Carolina Coops is a 7-figure global manufacturing empire that builds pr...

Brian Driscoll started his digital marketing career charging just $10 an hour to run campaigns from a desk, teaching himself SEO through trial and error. Today, he runs Motivated Leads, a multi-million dollar lead generation agency that specializes in finding highly qualified customers who are ready to buy right now . In this tactical episode of the UpFlip Podcast, Brian sits down with Ryan Atkins...

In 2019, Caleb was completely broke, living in a one-bedroom apartment, and trying to support his wife through law school on a single nonprofit salary. Armed with just $500 in leftover birthday money and a beat-up Prius, he started scouring yard sales and thrift stores for items with low perceived value. Fast forward to today, Caleb is the founder of Quick Flips—a massive video game reselling oper...

Kim Hatch was at rock bottom. After seven grueling years working as a police officer in a domestic violence unit, she lost her job and found herself navigating a brutal divorce. She needed to completely reinvent her life—but she never expected that salvation would come in the form of a septic tank. With zero industry experience (admitting she "didn't even know where poop went") and a...

Gianni Santino was exhausted. As a police officer in Connecticut working up to 80 hours a week, he had barely any time for his family. After a failed attempt at real estate investing left him buried in COVID-related evictions, Gianni stumbled upon a goldmine hidden in plain sight: a sketchy ATM inside a gentlemen's club that was quietly printing thousands of dollars a night in surcharge fees....

Joe Fontana spent a decade chasing a punk rock music career and another six years trapped in a soul-crushing corporate job that caused his leg hair to fall out from stress. Broke and with a baby on the way, he packed up his life, moved into his in-laws' basement, and took the ultimate leap of faith. He borrowed $21,000 from his mother's savings, scrapped his original restaurant idea, and l...

Christian Lynch went from running a childhood lemonade stand to dropping out of college, but he never lost his entrepreneurial drive. Today, he is the founder of Phase Two Coffee, a private catering mobile coffee cart generating $25,000 to $27,000 a month/cart—all without the massive overhead, debt, or risk of a traditional brick-and-mortar cafe. In this episode of the UpFlip Podcast, Christian br...

Dr. Stacy McFarland was tired of watching well-meaning pet parents feed their dogs birthday cakes and treats packed with toxic sugars, salt, and artificial fillers. So, this practicing veterinarian decided to step into the kitchen and change the industry herself. In this episode of the UpFlip Podcast, we sit down with Dr. Stacy to uncover how she built Doggie Bakery Miami. What started as a zero-b...

When Andrea Palacio stepped into the unfamiliar home services industry as an inexperienced founder, disaster struck almost immediately. A rogue manager quit after convincing 10 employees to leave, top clients walked away, and monthly revenue plummeted from $70,000 down to $40,000—all while Andrea was pregnant with her second child and raising an eight-month-old. With zero technical background and...

Brent Fletcher knew absolutely nothing about home inspections—until he bought his first house during COVID. After watching an inspector uncover thousands of dollars in hidden defects, Brent was handed an $8,000 check for closing concessions. That same day, he took that exact $8,000, deposited it, and went all-in on starting his own home inspection business. He committed to a 100-day challenge to b...

Tommy Mello took a college side hustle painting garage doors and turned it into A1 Garage—a home service behemoth on track to generate over $260 million in revenue this year. But he didn't do it by acting like a traditional tradesman. He did it by running his blue-collar business with the data-driven precision of a Silicon Valley tech giant. In this episode, Tommy sits down with Ryan Atkinson...

Dominic Rubino knows a painful truth about the trades: being great at your job has almost nothing to do with whether your business makes money. Growing up in an immigrant family of welders and framers, he watched talented contractors grind for years just to barely break even. After nearly going bankrupt running his own house-painting business, Dominic realized he needed to stop acting like a trade...

Jen McKee knew something in 2021 that the rest of the trades industry didn't: local businesses can absolutely dominate on TikTok. When a local plumbing company agreed to test her strategy, they didn't just get views—they generated massive inbound leads, scored thousands of five-star reviews, and became an industry icon without spending a single dollar on ads. As the founder of Key Heart Ma...

Brian Samson knows a harsh truth about the current American economy: if you run a service business right now, the math is brutal. Labor is incredibly expensive, turnover is high, and finding reliable operators can feel like a full-time job. But Brian has a cheat code. After years of running talent acquisition for hyper-growth, VC-funded tech startups in Silicon Valley, Brian took his high-level re...

Amber Farrell grew up watching her father dig ditches as a master plumber for 40 years. That upbringing gave her a genuine respect for blue-collar entrepreneurs—and a deep frustration watching them get sold expensive, unmeasurable marketing campaigns they didn't actually need. After selling her first digital marketing agency, Amber launched Far Beyond Marketing to empower trade and home servic...

Kara Ward found herself in a nightmare scenario on April 1st, 2020: her husband unexpectedly lost his job, they had zero severance, and a staggering $60,000 in medical debt hung over their heads. Desperate to pay the mortgage, Kara dragged an old dresser into her garage, painted it with leftover wall paint, and posted a photo on Facebook. That single post sparked a life-changing side hustle. Fast...

Oleg Lee started with a simple request: he asked his dad to print a custom-shaped pillow of his late childhood dog, Izzy. When he posted a photo of the lifelike pillow on Facebook, the internet lost its mind. Today, that single viral moment has evolved into a $20 million-a-year manufacturing empire producing 400,000 custom pillows annually. In this episode of the UpFlip Podcast, Oleg breaks down h...

Chris Heckman stared at his computer screen with a sinking feeling: his first major e-commerce store launch was a complete zero, leaving him with $100,000 in credit card debt. Instead of crawling back to the safety of his corporate job at Amazon, he adopted a "burn the boats" mentality, treated his failures as data, and built a print on demand (POD) powerhouse that has since generated ov...

Steve Griggs transforms backyards into multimillion-dollar outdoor experiences. After 40 years in the landscaping industry, Steve has built a $5M/year design firm catering to high-net-worth clients—including lawyers, investors, athletes, and celebrities. In this episode, Steve sits down with Ryan Atkinson to share the gritty reality of scaling a premium service business. From trimming bushes with...

Seif El-Sahly walked away from a comfortable, six-figure engineering career working in -50 degree northern mines to start a construction and renovation business in Hamilton, Ontario. Today, New Fort Inc. generates multiple seven figures a year, and Seif is breaking ground on massive 22-unit developments after successfully partnering with Home Depot and shooting a pilot for HGTV. In this episode, S...

Victoria Westcott went from a burnt-out school teacher grading online lessons to the founder of a cleaning empire generating over $1.7 million in revenue—all starting with a free 21-day online course. In this episode of the UpFlip Podcast, Victoria pulls back the curtain on how she and her sister built Oak Bay Clean into a local powerhouse boasting 81% recurring revenue and over 200 five-star revi...

Rod Khleif immigrated to the US in deep poverty, wearing Goodwill clothes and eating cereal with powdered milk. Decades later, he built a massive real estate portfolio—only to lose $50 million in the 2008 housing crash. But his story didn't end there. In this episode of the UpFlip Podcast, Rod sits down with us to share the raw, unfiltered truth about building wealth, losing it all, and the ex...

Natalia Zorina owns a fleet of 68 cars and generates over $3.5 million in gross revenue ($300k net)—but she says you can start this exact business tomorrow with zero dollars and zero vehicles of your own. In this episode, Natalia pulls back the curtain on the highly lucrative world of car rentals and co-hosting. Operating in Miami—a market notorious for rental scams—Natalia has built a trusted bra...

Most people only eat funnel cake once or twice a year at a fair, but Cheyenne loved them so much she would buy expensive amusement park tickets just to get her fix. Tired of driving out of her community to satisfy a craving, she launched a makeshift funnel cake pop-up shop in her front yard with just a tent, a fryer, and a $5 menu. Today, that front-yard Startup is Fun Diggity, a dessert brand gen...

Brian grew up in Detroit believing that if you mastered your plumbing craft, the money would automatically follow. He quickly realized the highest-paid technicians weren't the best wrench-turners—they were the best communicators. After mastering the art of persuasion, Brian stepped in as GM of Benjamin Franklin Plumbing and skyrocketed their revenue to $6.2 million in just two years by triplin...