From Exhausted Biochemistry Major to Seven Figure Earner: How Building Easily Excel Transformed Senna Filter's life

Four years ago, Senna Filter was a biochemistry graduate with the intention to enroll in medical school and pursue a career in pediatrics. Then COVID hit, and after some introspection, she realized that medicine wasn’t what she wanted to do after all. Drawing from the knowledge she acquired by taking Computer Science courses as a biochemistry undergraduate student, Senna taught herself some coding languages and transitioned into data science. 

Not long after, Senna’s husband suggested that she start sharing some of her knowledge about Microsoft Excel on social media.

“I thought it was a weird, crazy idea, but I did it anyway. I posted daily [Excel] tips and tricks for about two weeks. I also taught basic Excel shortcuts that save you a ton of time." 

Within two weeks, she amassed a whopping 500,000 followers on Instagram, which propelled her business, Senna Filter, to its current status.

“It happened overnight. One video had, like, 20 million views in a month. After that, I started thinking, ‘What do I want to do with this next? And how do I reach a larger audience?’” 

Senna considered many avenues but eventually settled on creating a Microsoft Excel online course for her audience. Choosing Thinkific as her online course platform, Senna has grown Easily Excel into her very own thriving business. Now, she’s about to launch a new institute to teach people how to create and sell their own online courses, and make passive income. 

Keep reading to learn how this California-based business owner achieved all this and became financially free.  

1. She chose Thinkific to host her online courses

It took Senna four months to create an LLC and set up an Employer Identification Number (EIN). Throughout that time, she continued to grow her social media audience. By December 2022, she decided to create her first online course and host it with Thinkific. 

In July 2023, she launched Easily Microsoft Excel, a beginner to intermediate course that teaches people everything they need to know about Microsoft Excel, including some shortcuts, tips, and tricks. Since then, she’s gotten well over 1,000 customers and built a solid community around her offerings. 

When choosing an online course platform, Senna's main criterion was stellar user experience, so when I asked her what exactly she loves about Thinkific, that was the first thing she mentioned.

Now that she’s creating an Institute that teaches people how to create and sell an online course, Senna is recommending Thinkific to her future students.

“The new course is about creating and selling an online course from scratch to finish, and I walk people through how to upload courses on Thinkific. One of the modules is solely about Thinkific: how much it’s helped me and how simple and user-friendly it is.”

2. She's an authentic and efficient one-woman team

Senna grew her Instagram account to 500,000 followers in just two weeks, and one would expect her to hire a small team to help her manage her audience, create content, and eventually put her courses together. But apart from a web developer she used to work with and an accountant who currently handles her finances, Senna didn’t hire anyone to help. 

“I do all of it on my own--the course creation, the filming, and the editing. I like to have creative ownership because I learn so much more when I’m doing it on my own and speaking to my own experiences,” Senna shares. 

“I’m creating a course that’s teaching everybody else how to do it from scratch, start to finish. I can’t speak to that and to my audience’s pain points if I’m not doing it myself. I have an audience of almost a million people, and I’ve been creating content for them by myself.”

Since Senna plans to scale Easily Excel to new heights, she would potentially like to build out a sales and marketing team to do some work behind the scenes, but she’ll remain the creative face of her brand.

3. She prioritizes self-care

Senna has a lot on her plate. She’s currently setting up her new course, the Online Course Institute, so she has to write the text-based course material, film and edit videos, and arrange it all in the correct order while creating content for her Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube followers and for her email list subscribers. 

Knowing how common it is for aspiring entrepreneurs to get burned out from doing too much, I asked Senna how she maintains a healthy work-life balance with everything she’s responsible for. It turns out she prioritizes self-care, and her advice to others who are trying to start an online business is to make sure you’re doing it for yourself and enjoying it. 

“If you’re putting out content that you like and you’re doing it for the right reasons, make sure you put aside time for yourself and spend it in ways that rejuvenate you,” she says. “I’m speaking from experience because I’ve pushed myself to where I’d stay up really late working, and that’s not optimal.” 

Senna herself sticks to a strict schedule. She works out every morning because that’s what keeps her in balance and gets her into a headspace where she can work for a couple of hours every day. When those hours are up, she closes her laptop and goes to relax. 

While she doesn’t think everyone should follow the same routine as her, she does find that being consistent at doing things that rejuvenate you is important.

In her course, she offers different timelines—three, six, and nine months—to help people find what works for their schedules so they don’t burn themselves out.

4. She creates and executes effective marketing strategies

Senna has built an audience of about 1 million followers across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and an email list of about 70,000 subscribers. Not only did she achieve all this in under two years, but she also built her audience organically—no ads! 

When I ask about her marketing strategies, here’s what she tells me: “I’ve only done organic reach so far. But when I created my first course, I ran two ads for it, and that was it. Other than that, it’s just been organic.”

However, she plans to run more ads for her upcoming course, which will start in July. She’ll market for four to six weeks to garner traction before she launches the course.

While her success on social media might seem like a fluke, growing her email list to 70,000 subscribers was a deliberate and concerted effort on Senna’s part. Email lists are notoriously difficult to build because you’re asking people who don’t know you personally to give you their email addresses so you can talk to them directly. 

However, because Senna recognized the importance of having an email list as a business owner, she created lead magnets to offer value to her audience at no cost.

“I can have a ton of followers, but I don’t have direct access to them. I could post on my social media, and they might see it or they might not. But when I create freebies, I’m able to get people’s emails and offer them something. Once they're on my email list, I can send them my newsletter. They’ll also receive promo offers for my courses when they come out.” 

Senna’s approach to building her email list is commendable because she currently has five freebies, four of which are directly related to her forthcoming course. This is a great way to prime her audience for the value they’ll receive when she eventually launches it. 

5. She genuinely wants to help people become entrepreneurs

Since she was suddenly thrust into entrepreneurship life, Senna didn’t have a resource to teach her how to navigate managing and growing her audience or create a valuable online course. She hopes to do that for other aspiring entrepreneurs. 

When I ask her about her goals for the foreseeable future, Senna tells me that she wants to be, to others, the mentor that she needed when she first started her business. 

“I want to walk people through that entire journey because it’s so incredible to start your own business. It’s so much work; it’s more work than my 9-5 was. But it’s so rewarding and incredible to be doing something that you’re passionate about and can change somebody else’s life.”

On the contents of her upcoming course, Senna says: “I hope to mentor people on how to find their niche and whether that niche is going to be profitable. I also cover everything about content creation and how to host the course on Thinkific. I talk about how to set up a Squarespace website, market your course when it’s already made, and generate passive sales.” 

Other topics she covers in the Institute include recording high-quality content, crafting a sales page, creating an evergreen marketing strategy, creating webinars, and building an email list. 

Another service Senna offers through her online course is direct access to her. While she replies to DMs on social media, that’s not a sustainable way of helping the Easily Excel community. She finds that she does that better via email.

“I’ve gotten quite a few emails from people about my courses, especially after they’ve enrolled and taken it. I can tell that they’re very dedicated and they want to learn. I prioritize their questions and try to engage with and help them as much as I can.” 

You can now enroll in Senna’s newest course where she teaches others how to create an online course from start to finish! Check it out here.

Senna wholly recommends Thinkific for hosting online courses. So, if you’re looking to launch your own online course program, get started with a free trial here.