From 31 Subscribers to $2M+ in Course Sales
How Susan McLeary turned her floral expertise into a thriving online teaching business — without burning out or living on a plane.
Susan McLeary, known online as Passionflower Sue, was a wedding and event florist who loved to teach. The problem wasn't demand — people wanted to learn from her all over the world. The problem was what teaching required: getting on a plane, again and again, for inconsistent pay, while a young family and aging parents needed her at home.
She had a hunch that online classes could change that. She had no idea where to start.
Eight years later, she's built one of the most respected online floral education brands in the world. Here's how it happened.
A ceiling she couldn't break through.
Susan had the audience. She had the talent. What she didn't have was a way to scale it.
Teaching in person meant trading time for money, one workshop at a time. The travel was relentless. The pay was unpredictable. And every opportunity she said yes to was time away from her family and her art.
She wanted to:
- Travel less and be home more
- Reach her global audience without living out of a suitcase
- Build something that didn't cap out at the number of hours in her day
Like a lot of experts, she was sitting on a goldmine of knowledge with no system to get it into the world. The tech felt overwhelming. The marketing felt like a foreign language. So the dream stayed a dream.
A film, not a sales pitch.
Before we ever talked about online courses, our team made a short portrait film about Susan's creative business. No agenda. We thought her story was worth telling.
That film is what built the trust.
Your team came and made a little film about my creative business, and it was so heartfelt and so lovely. I thought, these are the kind of people I want to work with. They look beyond the facade to get to the heart of why people do what they do.
Susan McLearyThat's the whole idea behind video with soul. And it's why, when Susan was ready to take a swing at teaching online, she came to us.
She teaches. We handle the rest.
When we asked Susan what she'd do with the videos once we made them, she admitted she hadn't gotten that far. That's the moment the real partnership started.
Here's what we built together:
- Surveyed her audience to find the content they actually wanted to buy
- Identified her most valuable, most marketable teaching
- Filmed and produced her first three online courses
- Built her online store and course platform from scratch
- Created lead magnets, a sales funnel, and automated email campaigns
- Launched and managed Facebook ad campaigns to grow her audience
Then we made one counterintuitive call: we gave the first course away for free.
Susan was terrified. It was the thing everyone was asking for, and we wanted to hand it out at no charge. But it worked. It built trust, it filled the email list, and it opened the door to everything that came after.
It was like the first little gift to welcome people into our house.
Susan McLearyHer only goal was $50,000.
She hit $200,000 in year one.
Since then, the partnership has produced:
- Email list: from 31 subscribers to over 70,000
- Instagram: from around 50,000 followers to roughly 400,000
- Course sales: $2 million and counting
- Nearly 200 online classes launched
- A thriving monthly membership with hundreds of active florists
Completely life changing. Every month when I receive my payment, I'm shocked. It's a wave of gratitude.
Susan McLearyIt's not one skill. It's six.
The people I knew who kept all of that in-house aren't doing online classes anymore. It's too much. It's such a diverse skill set.
Susan McLearyPlenty of creators try to do this themselves, or build the whole operation in-house. Susan watched them do it.
Filming, editing, marketing, funnels, ads, platform management. That's not one skill. It's six. Trying to own all of them is what drains the creativity right out of the work.
Susan kept doing what only she could do: teaching, creating, and connecting with her students. We did everything else.
I see people trying to piece it together themselves, draining energy away from their creativity. I'd tell them to test it. Give yourself six months and see what can happen.
Susan McLearyStill growing. Not just maintaining.
Eight years in, the partnership is still growing, not just maintaining.
The steady income gave Susan something most teachers never get: room to experiment. She now has the freedom to test new techniques, fail, try again, and innovate. That's led to new methods, new classes, and soon, a product line of her own.
We kind of gambled on each other. And it paid off.
Susan McLearyHer brand today
Your business isn't flowers. The pattern is.
Susan isn't a typical Tell Studios project. She's a partner.
We don't do this with everyone. We do it with a small handful of people who have something rare: real expertise, an audience that already loves them, and a desire to teach instead of fighting with tech and funnels all day.
If that's you, here's how it works. You keep doing the thing only you can do. We build the business around it — the videos, the platform, the funnel, the ads, the growth. Then we grow it together, for the long haul.
This tends to be a fit if:
- You've got a craft or body of knowledge people already pay to learn
- You have an engaged audience, even if it's not huge yet
- You're capped by in-person work and tired of trading time for money
- You'd rather create and teach than manage editors, email, and ad accounts
- You want a partner who's invested in the outcome, not a vendor who hands you files
Made you think “that's what I've been trying to build”?
If Susan's story sounds like the thing you've been circling, let's talk. We'll listen, ask a few questions, and tell you honestly whether we're the right partner.
A short call. Straight answers. No pressure either way.