Eight years, One partner: How Kate Toon built a million-dollar empire with the right OBM behind her
From $247K and doing everything herself to a $1.1M multi-brand empire.
WHO THIS IS FOR
If you’re a thought leader running a growing business that’s starting to outpace you — this story is for you.
You’re talented. You’ve built something real. But the business has grown faster than the systems, the team, and your capacity to hold it all. You’re the one with the big ideas — and you’re also the one doing everything else. You know you need a different kind of support. Not a task-doer. Not someone you have to manage. Someone who can actually run things.
Kate Toon knew exactly what that felt like. This is what happened when she found the right person to run the business with her.
THE CLIENT
Kate Toon: copywriter turned SEO educator turned multi-brand, multi-million dollar empire builder.
Kate Toon is the founder of Stay Tooned — an ecosystem of brands including The Clever Copywriting School, The Recipe for SEO Success, The Digital Marketing Collective, and the Umina Beach Book Nook. She is an international speaker, four-time author, podcast host, and one of Australia’s most recognised voices in digital marketing and SEO.
She didn’t start there. When she hired Leanne Woff of Audacious Empires in November 2016, she was a copywriter in the middle of a pivot. The Recipe for SEO Success course had just had its first run. Her email list had 500 people on it. She had one podcast and a part-time graphic designer. The rest, she was doing herself.
THE REAL PROBLEM
She thought she needed an extra pair of hands. The real problem was she’d never had someone she could actually trust.
Kate was capable, fast, and clear on where she wanted to go. What she described as her challenge — needing more capacity — was accurate, but incomplete. She’d worked with support before, and it had never stuck. She was a natural micromanager, not by choice, but because she hadn’t yet found someone who gave her a reason not to be.
She was personally managing her community and inbox, building social graphics, uploading podcasts, coding her own emails, coordinating guest appearances, and setting up launches — while simultaneously trying to grow an education brand and establish herself as the go-to name for DIY SEO in Australia. It was unsustainable. But the issue wasn’t just volume. It was that everything ran through her head, and no one else could be trusted with it.
What she actually needed was someone who would come in, learn the business as deeply as she knew it, and take genuine ownership. Not a resource to direct — a partner to rely on.
“Kate told people I run everything and she asks me for permission. She described herself as Melbourne weather — a rollercoaster — and me as Perth: steady, calm, unflappable.”
– Leanne Woff, Audacious Empires
THE DIAGNOSIS
This wasn’t a task problem. It was a trust and infrastructure problem, and it needed to be solved from the inside out.
When Leanne came on board, she started where any good OBM starts: by learning the business completely. Understanding the landscape, the tools, the team, the workflows, the priorities — and where everything was falling through the cracks. Not because that’s all she could offer, but because you can’t lead what you don’t understand. And then, gradually, as the trust deepened, the grip loosened.
The diagnosis from the outset was clear: Kate’s business didn’t need more helpers. It needed someone who could hold the operational centre of gravity — someone who could see the whole picture, connect the moving parts, and free Kate to operate at the level she was actually built for. That meant building infrastructure that didn’t exist, systems that could scale, and a relationship deep enough that Kate could finally stop being the bottleneck in her own business.
WHAT WAS BUILT: EIGHT YEARS OF WORK
Every launch, every pivot, every new brand. Here’s what the partnership actually looked like.
Over eight years, the scope of the work expanded to match the ambition of the business. Leanne and her team were the operational engine behind a multi-brand company that was constantly evolving — planning, coordinating, building, managing, and executing alongside Kate at every stage. Here’s what that looked like across the partnership:
- Supported 32 launches of The Recipe for SEO Success: co-creating repeatable launch systems, managing project coordination, and keeping every moving part on track from waitlist through to post-launch wrap
- Helped grow the email list from 500 subscribers to over 20,500: building and maintaining 150+ automations and managing all email marketing execution across multiple brands
- Supported three podcast brands: coordinating production workflows, content repurposing systems, and social distribution
- Co-created and managed the Digital Marketing Collective membership from concept to launch: full project coordination, infrastructure setup, and ongoing management
- Supported multiple national and international speaking tours, including Yoast.Con in the Netherlands — liaising with event organisers as main point of contact, preparing and delivering Kate’s speaking assets, coordinating the team with travel and invoicing, and keeping everything running smoothly back home while she away
- Planned and coordinated four paid conferences and three sold-out retreats and masterminds: managing everything from venue and speakers to run sheets and goodie bags
- Helped grow the I Love SEO free community from hundreds to 11,600 members; established and managed the admin of two additional communities from scratch
- Supported four book releases: coordinating launch activities, managing timelines, and handling operational details across award-winning and Amazon No. 1 titles
- Built waitlists across three brands from zero to thousands: assisted with creating freebies, customer journeys, consistent promotion, handled waitlist functionality – forms, pages, automations and email flows
- Facilitated expansion of digital information products: managed creation and development process of 30+ products in Kate’s digital template shops
- Navigated every major business pivot alongside Kate: coordinating the opening, growth, and strategic wind-down of brands and offers as the vision evolved
- Supported the launch of the Umina Beach Book Nook into the Stay Tooned ecosystem: a physical bookshop, now with its own community of 1,400 members
Through every expansion and every pivot, Leanne’s role evolved with the business. As OBM and strategic partner, she has been the operational centre of gravity — coordinating the team, running weekly planning sessions with Kate, managing projects in Asana, communicating daily in Slack, briefing and supporting contractors, and keeping everything moving toward the vision. She holds the legacy knowledge of the entire business. She is the first person Kate calls when anything needs solving — and the last person standing when everything needs to land.
“Leanne is more than my online business manager. She is my confidant, my cheerleader, moral support. She’s really an essential part of my business. I really don’t think my business would be where it is today without both Leanne and the Audacious Empires team’s skills, moral support, enthusiasm and hard work.”
– Kate Toon
THE RESULTS
A business that grew 345% in five years and a founder who can finally take a three-week holiday without worrying.
$3M+
Recipe for SEO Success cumulative revenue
32
Recipe Course launches managed end-to-end
20,500+
Email subscribers (up from 500)
150+
Email automations built and maintained
$1.1M
Revenue in FY2021 peak year
345%
Revenue growth from 2016-2021
11,600
I Love SEO community members
8+
Years of partnership
When Leanne joined in late 2016, Kate’s business turned over $247K. By FY2021, it reached $1.1 million. That growth wasn’t inevitable — it was the direct result of having someone who could hold the back end of the business while Kate focused on the work only she could do: creating, speaking, leading, and building the brand.
And perhaps more meaningfully: Kate took a three-week holiday. She came back to a business that was still running. It was the first time she’d ever been able to do that.
“Going on holidays for 3 weeks and feeling completely relaxed, to say I highly recommend Leanne would be an understatement. Even as a copywriter I’m lost for words when it comes to describing how great she is.”
– Kate Toon
WHAT THIS MAKES POSSIBLE
The real value of the right OBM partnership isn’t just what gets done. It’s what you’re freed to do.
Kate no longer had to be in every conversation, across every project, involved in every decision. She could say yes to an international speaking gig without the business collapsing behind her. She could launch a new product idea without personally managing every detail. She could pivot — close something that wasn’t working, open something new — because there was someone who already understood the whole picture and could execute the transition.
That’s what changes when the operational load is genuinely carried by someone else. Not just the to-do list. The mental weight. The constant background hum of everything that needs managing. That’s what Kate got back and what she’s been able to do with it speaks for itself.
Kate says it plainly. Every time someone says, ‘Look what you did!’ — she turns it back: look what we did.
“For Leanne Woff. The Thelma to my Louise — a smart, sensible human who is a fabulous friend, a firm rock, a lighthouse in dark times and just an amazing person all around. My business would not be what it is without you.”
– Kate Toon, book dedication in Six Figures While You Sleep
Services Provided:
All work with Kate has been delivered under an ongoing OBM and Operations Partnership — a retainer engagement covering the full breadth of strategic and operational support the business has needed at each stage of growth. This has included:
