The tiny home pro who found freedom and the tools to strengthen her business
Essential financial know-how, as well as automated operations, helped this mission-driven small business owner persevere.
Ellen Stone had been running her business, Tiny Home Central, for six years when she considered stepping back from her work. Like many entrepreneurs, Stone felt overloaded by day-to-day operations, despite her passion for helping people in San Diego, California, who dream of owning or living in mobile tiny houses. “I was feeling pretty overwhelmed, honestly,” Stone says. “How would I get from where I was standing to the vision that I had for the future?”
That’s when Stone discovered Verizon Small Business Digital Ready, a free online program. Through self-paced courses and live events, Stone found the knowledge that helped her carry on. With Digital Ready, she says, “There was a clean way to go from point A to point C. I get really motivated when I have a place to find information.”
Stone has found high value in the program’s live events including Ask the Expert and Hands-On Help sessions. In the latter, small business owners can meet one-on-one with experienced professionals about specific topics. “You get to ask the expert and hear from the folks that know about each of these parts of running a business,” she explains.
One expert leading an event called Understanding Your Numbers: How to Read Financial Reports taught Stone how to interpret financial reports, and, crucially, which reports to generate. “He was like, ‘You need to know these are the three reports that matter, and this is where to look,’” Stone explains. “I went in right when the event was over and I found the reports and I printed them out. There was this ‘I can do it too’ vibe that he was putting out that made me feel like I could be capable at managing my finances for the business.”
Tiny Home Central helps people navigate local ordinances and acquire the necessary permits to live in a mobile tiny house or place one on their property legally. Stone manages the entire process, from working with contractors and managing architectural drawings, to situating the unit on the property and hooking it up to utilities.
For the details of running her own business, Stone picked up a great deal of financial know-how from Setting Up Accounting Software and other live events. Stone now uses a business credit card and automates many financial processes with software. “So all of those parts of accomplishing my financial and business needs, all of those happen without me having to tell them what to do,” Stone explains. It saves her over 50 hours of office work every year, which translates into just under $10,000 in consulting rate value. “With the streamlined workflow and increased capacity, my business has currently had 170% revenue growth in 2025 compared to 2024,” Stone says. “So now I can be freed up to be in the field and doing what I love.”
What Stone loves most is helping people. “I'm really mission-driven,” she says. She sees mobile tiny houses as part of the solution to the housing crisis in the expensive San Diego market. Recently, she connected an anonymous philanthropist who funded a mobile tiny house with someone whose home was lost in Los Angeles-area fires. That type of link is part of what Stone brings to her community, she says. “There’s actually no scarcity when people are connected; people get their needs met,” Stone says. “This person will have a new home that’s comfortable and beautiful and gets to move on with their life.”
Verizon Small Business Digital Ready is part of Verizon’s goal to support 1 million small businesses by 2030 with free resources to help them succeed. To sign up, visit Verizon Small Business Digital Ready. Visit CitizenVerizon.com to learn more about the company’s responsible business efforts. An individual user's experience may vary and results are not guaranteed.
