Broke to Billionaire: How to Turn a Sidehustle Into Your Salary | Allison Ellsworth

BigDeal

Codie Sanchez

Business, Marketing, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.9 • 972 Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2025

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Join me as I sit down with Allison Ellsworth, the co-founder of Poppi, who built a billion-dollar soda company from scratch. Allison shares her incredible journey from working in oil and gas to landing a life-changing deal on Shark Tank. Discover her secrets to successful branding, attracting celebrity partnerships, and navigating a multi-billion dollar acquisition by Pepsi. We dive deep into the challenges she faced, the pivotal moments, and her invaluable advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. Don't miss her insights on how to pitch investors and build a thriving community around your brand. If you’ve ever wanted to launch a brand, today’s episode is for you. Thanks to SoFi for sponsoring this episode! Need funding? Shop and compare providers in minutes + get up to $2M—with no credit hit for exploring your options. Start here → ⁠https://sofi.com/codie⁠ 00:00:00 Introduction 00:03:37 From Oil and Gas to Beverage Industry 00:06:19 Health Issues and the Birth of Poppy 00:08:44 Navigating Early Challenges and Going Digital 00:14:28 Building a Billion Dollar Brand 00:15:54 The Importance of Team and Culture 00:23:40 Personal Life and Business Balance 00:30:27 Celebrity Endorsements and Marketing Strategies 00:35:10 The Road to Acquisition by Pepsi 00:36:53 The Right Time for Acquisition 00:37:28 Building Relationships for Success 00:38:06 Challenges as a Female CEO 00:39:51 Handling Disrespect and Conflict 00:40:44 The Importance of a Business Coach 00:47:17 Balancing Passion and Profit 00:50:06 Letting Go of Control 00:51:26 Hiring and Culture Fit 00:56:22 Brand Building and Community 01:08:38 Inspiring the Next Generation ___________ MORE FROM BIGDEAL 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez OTHER THINGS WE DO 🌐 Our community: https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID 📰 Free newsletter: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp 📚 Biz buying course: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN 🏠 Resibrands: https://resibrands.com/ 💰 CT Capital: https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk 🏦 Main St Hold Co: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Going on Shark Tank absolutely changed my life.
0:03.2	Hi, Sharks. I'm Alison Ellsworth.
0:05.3	I'm the first person to have gotten a deal to be a shark ever.
0:07.9	That is wild.
0:08.8	How do you build a billion dollar brand?
0:11.1	What is the formula?
0:12.1	I always say there's like three things.
0:14.1	One is...
0:15.9	Alison Ellsworth built a modern soda empire from scratch.
0:19.2	From local farmers markets to a Shark Tank deal. Perhaps the most successful soft drink startups that America has ever seen. Poppy has over 3 billion views on TikTok. One third of the platform has seen my face seven times. Poppy was the fastest grown beverage in the history of beverage, basically. I don't know that. As a brand, if you are not on TikTok, talking, posting multiple times a day,
0:37.9	guess what that costs you is your time? Have you ever had a really big disagreement or something go
0:43.0	really sideways? There was literally screaming, fighting, but I think that it brings good resolution
0:49.6	to have those moments. I like love the good and the bad. Our mission at Poppy's at Poppies to Revolutionized Soda for the next generation. I want it to be the soda. My kids and grandkids know as soda. And the only way to do that is to get it to more hands. What does it take to sell a company to Pepsi for like $1.95 billion? Yeah. So especially in beverage, there's literally three people that can buy you,
1:11.3	or you can go public. And...
1:13.2	Hi, and welcome back to the Big Deal podcast. I'm Cody Sanchez. In this episode,
1:20.5	Alison Ellsworth breaks down the exact playbook she used to turn skeptics into superfans and land
1:25.0	one of the biggest beverage deals in years with her company, Poppy.
1:28.7	And she didn't do it by luck. She did it with a lot of hustle and one secret, which was a guy on
1:34.7	Shark Tank who helped her take all the homework he'd had over decades and apply it to her business.
1:40.1	She credits him and a few others with the reason why Poppy is now worth $1.95 billion.
1:46.1	We're actually trying to do the same thing here at the Big Deal podcast.
1:49.4	Steal some of the best and brightest homework so that you guys can have mentors just like she did.
	...

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