She Won Two Emmys in Hollywood. Then She Got a Bad Countertop and Built a Company Instead — With Suzanne Sotelo

She Won Two Emmys in Hollywood. Then She Got a Bad Countertop and Built a Company Instead — With Suzanne Sotelo

EPISODE SUMMARY: Two Emmy Awards. Twenty-seven years in Hollywood lighting live television spectacles like Dancing with the Stars and American Idol. Then a bad countertop experience in rural Wisconsin changed everything. Sabrina sits down with Suzanne Sotelo, founder of Gallery 77 in Hudson, Wisconsin, for a conversation that is equal parts origin story, business reality check, and creative manifesto. Suzanne moved from California to Wisconsin without a job, without a plan, and without the faintest idea how to cut a slab of stone. What she did have was a theater degree, a studio art minor, a nearly million-dollar SBA loan, and the bone-deep belief that she and her husband could do it better. Eight and a half years later, Gallery 77 fabricates and installs countertops for homeowners across the St. Croix Valley — and Suzanne still answers her emails at six in the morning. This one is for every woman who's ever looked at a blank page and decided to write something completely unexpected on it.

The Power of Three: The Zip Code Strategy That Builds a Compounding Reputation in 90 Days

EPISODE SUMMARY It's not who you know. It's who knows you. In this solo episode, Sabrina delivers one of her sharpest and most actionable frameworks yet: the Power of Three. You don't need to own your city. You just need to own three zip codes — and become the stupid obvious choice in each one. Sabrina opens with a childhood story about accidentally destroying a row of carrot seedlings with her grandparents' rusty hand cultivator, thinking they were weeds. The roots weren't deep enough. Neither are yours if you're spreading your marketing across too wide an area without dominating anywhere specific. The fix is simple: pull your top three zip codes from the past year, pick three actions for each one, and commit to 90 days before you judge the results. Backed by the story of Linda Nelson of Greenscapes in Naples, Florida — whose mom started the company in 1962 and who grew it to $20M by digging deep, not wide.

She Had No Plumbing Experience. That Turned Out to Be Her Superpower With Kelly Evans

EPISODE SUMMARY What happens when a woman who did hair, stayed home with her kids for seven years, put herself through business school during COVID while pregnant, and grew up as number six of seven in a family navigating addiction — walks into a plumbing and HVAC company and the owner almost doesn't hire her because she's a woman? She doubles the business in a year, adds electrical, gets licensed in a second state, hires a second service manager, and becomes the person the owner credits as the only one willing to challenge him. Sabrina sits down with Kelly Evans, service manager at LHR Plumbing, Cooling, Heating and Electric in Manchester, New Hampshire, for a conversation about leadership without a title, building culture through empathy, and what it looks like to show up for a company — and for yourself — even when life is mid-pivot. Kelly is mid-divorce, mid-growth, and completely in it. And she wouldn't have it any other way.

The Cheapest Lead Generation Tool in Home Services Is Already Free... You're Just Not Using It

EPISODE SUMMARY A five-star review is a $500 lead. And most home service businesses are leaving them on the table because they wait too long to ask — or never ask at all. In this solo episode, Sabrina makes the case that reviews are the cheapest, most effective lead generation tool in home services, and then hands you a done-for-you system to capture them in four minutes per job. The framework is simple: TAR. Timing, Asking, Responding. Same-day text, not a week-later email. Language that sounds like you, not corporate copy. And a response to every single review — five-star, one-star, and everything in between — within 48 hours. Sabrina shares exactly how Mover and Maids of Mover automate this, what Ashley Rayon Smith of Spartan Roof Construction did to get 600+ five-star Google reviews with zero under five stars, and why the compounding effect of reviews is the one marketing channel that never shows up as a negative on your P&L.

She Built a 22-Member Networking Collective in Five Months With No Budget With Angela Lingle

Episode Summary: What do you do when you fall obsessively in love with outdoor lighting at your son's graduation party, spend a decade mastering the craft for someone else's company, and then watch your husband go through a serious injury that forces everything to stop? You take six months off, rediscover what matters, and come back with a plan to build something on your own terms. Sabrina sits down with Angela Lingle — the Lighting Lady of Waukesha, Wisconsin — for one of the most energizing conversations about networking, community building, and creative entrepreneurship the show has had.Angela didn't just start a business. She started a networking collective, proposed it to a builders association, and launched 22 members strong at a home show six months later. She did 30 one-on-ones in 30 days when her calendar was empty. She got a free ticket to a lighting show in Orlando because she helped someone in Atlanta. And she's just getting started. This episode is a masterclass in how relationships actually build revenue.