How can you lure more people into patronizing your cause and your brand? In this episode, host, Scott Carson, and guest, Elyse Archer, pave the way through simple but efficient answers to this typical branding query. Elyse, who is a visibility coach, keynote speaker, and host of Instant Impact podcast, dives into the topic of building a reputation online and shares her reputation formula. She talks about the best social media platforms to promote your brand or name and shares some key aspects, such as Sheehan’s Wall. Elyse advises you to do what you need to do until you don’t have to do it anymore. Tune in to find more brand-building strategies your way.
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Building Your New Brand Identity with Elyse Archer
I am jacked up and excited for our special guest, who is going to drop some knowledge bombs on all of you out there. I know many of you in the note nation across the country are in that position and mindset of looking to transition. You want to be a full-time real estate investor. You want to tell your boss to take that job and shove it. You want to do some big things. I see many entrepreneurs struggle with that dual message, “I’m an employee. I’m an entrepreneur. How do I transition into being who you are?” You don’t have to be Scott Carson. I don’t want you to be Scott Carson. I want you to be you because we are all different. We all have a message. We’ve all got strengths and things that set us apart.
I’m honored to have this rock star join us. I’m talking about the one and only, Elyse Archer. She is a visibility coach for the purpose-driven leaders whose insights have been featured in major media, including Forbes and Inc. She’s a keynote speaker and host of the show Instant Impact, which I highly encourage you to go and check out. She shares her best practices from top business leaders who’ve created extraordinary personal brands and world-class networks. This lady has been a brand expert for years. She’s been working with tons of people in the sales aspect for years. She’s done an amazing job transitioning on becoming an expert in our space and providing much great content and many great nuggets to people she works with. I had to have her on. I followed her on LinkedIn a little bit. We were LinkedIn friends for a while. When she posted there, I was like, “She is going to make a great guest for the Note Closers Show. I’m honored that she’s taken time out of her busy day in Atlanta to join us here on the Note Closers Show. Elyse, welcome to the show.
I’m excited, Scott. Thank you for that intro. This is going to be great.
Definitely, it’d be fun. If you can’t have fun in what you’re doing, you’re doing something wrong and that’s the way I look at it. You’ve worked with some big names. You’ve had a huge top 10 to top 14 podcast out there. Unfortunately, your cohost passed away suddenly and you’ve transitioned and stuff like that. I was listening to one of your episodes and so the other ones out there, you had gone through that whole entrepreneurial transition from one thing to another. Would you like to talk about that before we dive into some more stuff?
When it comes to reinventing a personal brand, I can totally relate to anybody who feels like they’re going through that. When I left corporate in 2015, all that I knew was I no longer wanted to be in the corporate. Some of your readers may be able to relate to this where they know that for whatever reason, the place that they were, it’s no longer for them. Now that I work in the space of helping people build a brand and transition effectively, I know all the things that I should have done in the order. At that time, I looked back at it and I laugh because there was a lot that I did wrong. When I was leaving corporate, I was transitioning out of advertising sales for small businesses and I felt called to go and do sales coaching.
I didn’t have any clients. I didn’t have any knowledge of sales coaching. I knew how to sell and I was good at it. I thought, “I can teach other people how to do this.” Part of what I look back on with why I was able to successfully do and make that transition was all that I knew was I needed to be known. I didn’t have a client base. I didn’t have a curriculum. Many people spend so much time trying to get all the nuts and bolts and pieces in place. If you’re unknown, if you don’t have clients, if you don’t have a reputation, then you don’t have a business. The thing that I accidentally did well was I went about building a brand and a reputation in that space. I was very aggressive about promoting myself online and offline. Because of that, I was able to quickly build up a great client base and have a successful career.
I exited that company and had to go about reinventing myself again and rebuilding my personal brand. I am certainly happy to share steps, strategies, and anything that would be useful to your audience. I’ve done it twice now in the past several years. Fortunately, I’ve been successful in doing it both times. It’s been a learning process and I made a ton of mistakes along the way. I’m passionate about helping anybody else who’s going through that transition and looking to brand themselves in a new space or make the leap out of corporate into being an entrepreneur. I like to think I’ve made all the mistakes and learned along the way. Hopefully, I can help some people avoid some of the mistakes I made and get there faster.
In a spirit of it being the end of the year, Halloween, we all go through different variety of reasons. Not necessarily true horror stories, but it can be very daunting of going in and transitioning from one major thing to another one. A lot of people struggle with it. You mentioned something important about building an online reputation versus trying to build a course or clients. I think a lot of entrepreneurs try to do the whole perfection, like, “It has to be perfect before I launch anything and it’s the other way around.”
This is something I’d say to my clients all the time, but it’s true. Perfectionism is for poor people. You can choose to be perfect. You can choose to perfect the thing but know that every perfectionist I know is generally struggling to make money. They’re struggling to grow their business. You’ve got to make the choice. Which one is it going to be for you?
You talked a little bit about building a reputation online. You’ve even talked through some of your different shows and your guests about having a reputation formula. Would you like to dive into that and why that matters to people?
People feel confused about how to build a brand. How do I get known? What is a personal brand? If we can simplify it, having a strong personal brand in your industry is simply about having a strong reputation. The way that we break it down in the Brand Builders Group is that your reputation is comprised of two different things. It’s your results multiplied by your reach, result times reach equals your reputation. Here’s what I mean by that, the results are what have you done in any industry, in a space, in your life? What challenges have you overcome? What’s your superpower? What do you do better than anybody else? Those are all important. Those are key pieces of building a brand. If you stop there and you don’t have any reach, nobody knows about you. You don’t have a reputation. It’s a net-zero. This is the thing that I think is a frustration for a lot of entrepreneurs is they feel like they are best-kept secrets in their space. They’re like, “I’m good at this. I have great customer service. I take good care of my clients. I have integrity. I’m ethical.” Nobody knows about them. They don’t have a reputation.
Equally important is your reach and your reach is who knows about you, who knows about what you’ve done. When someone says, “I’m looking for guidance in the space of real estate investing. I’m looking for someone to help me here.” Are you the first person that someone thinks of? Is it someone else? That really speaks to your reach. How many people know about you? You need both in order to have a reputation. You can’t have one or the other. This is something that I’m also passionate about is if you have a big reach but you don’t have great results, that’s not a strong reputation either. To me, it’s critical to cultivate both to get excellent at what you do. Continuing education, hone your skills, get better and better, hire a coach, get trained, get good at what you do, but then you can’t shy away from letting people know about it. This is something I think a lot of other entrepreneurs struggle with is they feel weird. They don’t want to promote themselves.
You may have this conversation with your audiences and clients, where people feel strange about promoting themselves. They say it feels gross. It feels egotistical. The thing is, if you’re good at what you do and you hold it back, you don’t share that with other people, it’s a disservice. Somebody needs you. Somebody needs someone like you who does a great job and has integrity. You can’t make building a personal brand about you. You’ve got to make it about being visible to the people you’re serving and helping. Those are the two things, results multiplied by your reach is how you develop a rock-solid reputation.
Where do you think the biggest bang for buck for people to get the word out on what they’re doing these days? Are you thinking about blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, video, podcast? I want to hear it from you.
Building Brand Identity: You can’t make building a personal brand about you. You’ve got to make it about being visible to the people you’re serving and helping.
It can be different for different people. I don’t think there’s a one size fits all. What has worked best for me personally over the years has actually been video on LinkedIn. It was almost a mistake. This was when I was first exiting corporate and I knew that I needed to be known as a sales coach. I didn’t know how to do that. I tried everything. I created a local networking group. I went and spoke at events. I had a podcast. The thing that worked best though and continues to work best to this day is short, sweet thought leadership videos posted on all social media, but by far, I always got the best results on LinkedIn. It’s interesting because more people are picking up on that because I noticed on LinkedIn specifically, it’s getting more saturated.
All of a sudden people are like, “This is amazing. I’m getting so much organic reach. I had no idea this was here.” I was like, “Get away, you’re crowding my space.” It’s cool to see how well it works and that it works so well for other people. It depends on who your audience is. If your audience is on LinkedIn, being visible, creating video content, you’re going to get pretty good engagement. If your audience is different, a lot of my clients have been super successful in building big Instagram brands. That was never a focus of mine. It’s funny because many of my clients are on there and I feel like I’m playing catch up, but you have to go where your people are. Typically, video content is going to convert way better than anything else.
I’m a huge fan of video. We’ve been doing videos for years. We’ve got thousands of videos. That’s a great way for people to get a chance to know you and build rapport without being in front of them. It’s a 24 hour a day advertising. It’s the second-largest searched content on YouTube. You said something good about, you’re getting a lot of organic reach on LinkedIn and it doesn’t have to be hour-long, two-hour-long webinars. Before the LinkedIn Lives, for 10 to 15 minutes is I’m going to have on there. It’s those bite-size digestible nuggets of content that work well in there.
The short and sweet, like 1 to 3 minutes max is something that we teach. There’s a great book on this called Youtility by Jay Baer. I don’t know if you’ve read it, but I highly encourage all your readers to read it. He teaches to take one thing at a time. You answer one question at a time that your audience or that your ideal customer would have and you teach everything that you know, but it’s one bite at a time and it’s in random order. Sometimes people feel fear about sharing everything they know for free because they think, “Why would someone hire me?” It’s the opposite. You’ve done a good job at this. The more you can be visible and add value and continue to show up and share what you know, people don’t pay for information. They will pay for organization and application. It doesn’t hurt you to give away everything that you know because people will get it.
It is as if someone wants to take the time to organize 800 different blog posts and try to put it in the right order, more power to them. Let them do it. They’re not your customer. Even in my own life, like this coach that I signed up with this year, I followed her for years. I got so much value out of her content that I have now invested every significant amount of money with her in a short amount of time. It was because she was generous with what she shared. She changed my life before I ever paid her. To me, “How can we do that? How can we change people’s lives before they ever pay us?” When I thought about it, it was as if I’ve gotten this much out of her without paying her, what would be possible if I did? I’m having that mindset of generosity, sharing, giving away everything, knowing that in some way, shape or form, it’s going to come back to you.
A lot of people worry about that, especially in the real estate space. We talk to people and they go, “I don’t want to give away too much because I want people to sign up for my workshop or my training.” I’m like, “That’s great, but you’ve got to give something so they see what they’re going to get in nowadays world, specifically with the Khan Academy and Lynda.com and all the video and stuff like that. You’ve got to provide some content online.” Put it in random order. If somebody wants to take the time to figure it all out and put in an A to Z, good for them. They’re probably not going to be your client anyway. A lot of people will see that value and it takes time for somebody to write a big check or invest with you as a coach or a client. That video builds rapport and we get that all the time like, “I have been watching you for 3 to 6 months and I’m ready to do something with you.”
I do a fair amount of work in the online coaching space, so I know a lot of the numbers here. For coaches, in particular, people are following them anywhere from 1 to 3 years before they decide to hire them. It speaks so much about playing the long game. This applies regardless of industries, we have to realize it takes a while to build up a brand. It takes a while to build up a reputation. To me, my whole personal brand is about generosity. It’s about showing up, giving away what you know, making introductions, being generous with your money, giving back to the community, and playing the long game. It’s not only you getting better long-term results, but it’s way more fun.
For anyone who is thinking about, “How do I build a reputation in the space? How do I become known as the go-to person?” It’s like, give away what you know, be generous, share your wisdom, share your insights, make introductions, make connections. If videos are your thing, be visible on video, it’s a powerful tool. Generosity is a time bender. The more generous you are, the faster you can get the results you’re looking for. It’s something I’ve experienced in my own life. You’ve probably experienced it too, but I’m so passionate about teaching people to not be more in scarcity. The more in fear you are, the more you’re going to hold yourself back from everything you want. Show up, be generous and the results follow.
You talk about the long game, “I wanted to leave my job. I want this to succeed and rock up. I want to do some big things, but I don’t have the time to do this in a long time.” That’s why I tell people, “Start planning now for next year.” Is there a time frame for telling people that need to start planning to make that transition or start putting assets in place now, if they’re planning six months from now or what?
The sooner you can start building up reputation equity in your space, the better. If you know that you’re going to leave, start building your brand now. I did it differently, quite frankly. When I left corporate, I had six months of savings to my name. I don’t advise doing it that way, but I work well under pressure. It worked for me. He was my boyfriend at the time and he’s my husband now. He had moved in and he’d been there for about a week or two and I said, “I think I’m ready to quit my job.” He was like, “Was this pre-plan the whole time?” He’s a good man. He’s stuck with me through it. I made it work. The reason why I made it work is that I was very aggressive about building my brand. It doesn’t have to take a long time to create your business and get results if you have the right work ethic if you become visible quickly if you build that reputation.
When I went into sales coaching, I had a six-figure business within a year. I exited my old company and started this company about a year and a half ago, I’ve had a multiple six-figure business within a little over a year. You can do it. The amount of money you make is going to depend on your industry. You can make great money in their industry. They can do better than I have, but it’s been about choosing to be visible, choosing to be seen. When I first exited corporate, I did a video a day for a year because I knew that I needed to be known.
I did anything it took. I also did the more proactive traditional sales approaches because I needed that. You have to do what you need to do to get clients while you’re also building your brand and your reputation. My goal for all of my clients and what I’ve done is try to get to the point where you have such a strong reputation in your space. You get enough inbound opportunities that you don’t have to go out and do the prospecting game anymore. You do what you need to do until you don’t have to do it anymore.
You talk a lot about Sheehan’s Wall. Can you explain a little bit about that? What Sheehan’s Wall is and the importance of that?
The biggest challenge that most entrepreneurs face nowadays is noise. There are many people vying for the attention of your customers, of your referral partners. It is how do you get seen and heard above everybody else is a big challenge. It’s one of the core concepts of what we teach at Brand Builders Group. The concept behind it is that there’s a guy named Peter Sheehan. He studies brands and businesses that rise to the top of their class versus the ones that don’t. Essentially, what he says, “In every industry, you’ve got this invisible wall. On one side of the wall, you’ve got people who are well known. On the other side, you’ve got people who aren’t as well known. On the side of the known, there is opportunity, money, clients. On the side of the unknown, it’s noise, obscurity and lack.”
Building Brand Identity: Generosity is a time bender. The more generous you are, the faster you can get the results you’re looking for.
What’s happening is on the side of the unknown, everyone is trying to break through that wall. They see what’s possible. They see the opportunities other people in their space are getting. They see the brands they’ve built. They see the clients. They see the money and they want to breakthrough. The challenge and the reason why most of them never do is that they’re never clear enough on some foundational questions that you need to know to have a clear successful brand. What problem do you solve? Who do you solve it for? What’s your message? What’s your uniqueness? How are you going to reach your people? What’s your marketing strategy?
They’re not clear on those things. They come at the wall from all these different angles and there’s never anything that’s strong enough to break through. They may come up close to it, but then they bounce back off. The people who do break through the wall are the ones who get hyper-focused. They get very focused on being known for doing one thing for a specific group of people. They’ve got one primary business model, one clear message and they go all-in on that. With that focus, it’s a matter of time with enough consistency, velocity and momentum that they’re able to break through that wall. Once you’re on the other side of the wall, everything changes. The world opens up for you like that and I call it the Oprah Effect where it doesn’t matter what Oprah wants to talk about, do or promote. People are going to listen and trust her because she’s Oprah.
For a lot of people building personal brands nowadays, that’s incredible to think about. What would it look like if I could do what I wanted to? I can talk about what I want. Sell what I want. Prove what I want and people will listen and they’ll want to take action because I am me. The dynamic that shifts on the side of the unknown, everything feels like a push. It feels hard. You have to reach out and introduce yourself. You have to pitch. You have to tell people about why they should work with you. On the side of the known, though, it’s the pull. This is where people are coming to you. Opportunities are coming to you. You are at choice for what you spend your time on, what you promote, what you endorse.
There are many examples of this, but this is one of the mistakes that people make. They see the successful brands and businesses in their space. They see them having all these different revenue streams and all these different products and talking about all this different stuff online, thinking, “That’s how I’m going to get there too.” It’s not the case. One of our better-known clients is named Lewis Howes, who hosts a top podcast, School of Greatness. Not everyone knows this about Lewis, but some people will. The way he initially broke through the wall was by building a brand based around LinkedIn. He focused on becoming known as the LinkedIn guy.
He did that for years. It wasn’t until he got that momentum going that he was able to breakthrough. Now, he can do what he wants. People will follow and they’ll buy from him. It happens every single time. Gary Vaynerchuk is the same thing. The Wine Library TV went all in on that for years and broke through. Now, he can have a sneaker line and a top marketing agency and talk about the New York Jets and people will listen because it’s him. That’s the key. That’s the hidden thing you see behind this. You don’t see that happening behind the scenes with big personal brands. There is an extreme focus on becoming known for one thing first and then the world opens up afterward.
Gary Vee of the Wine Library TV. Hopefully, he buys the Jets pretty soon. I’m doing something horribly out there. I call it the BB gun effect. A lot of entrepreneurs aren’t out there shooting in many different directions and it’s not making an impact on the wall. If they took all those pellets in one and being very focused, they could make a bigger dent impact on that wall to breakthrough faster. What are some of the key components or key things that you think budding entrepreneurs are leaving the job force to go out on their need to focus on? What are the three things that they need to make as a priority versus it being a back burner thing while they’re running? They’re trying to do everything, their LLC, their website, their social handles and all that stuff. What are the three big things that are big musts for success?
I think it’s going to be different depending on your time frame.
Let’s say it’s six months.
You need clients unless you’ve got a long window. If you’ve got a long runway and that doesn’t matter to you, then you have more time to have fun with building your brand and building a reputation, but I connect with a number of clients who they’re doing the side hustle thing. They’re ready to leave and they’re like, “I’m going to go all-in on building my podcast.” I’m like, “That’s great. However, a podcast is not necessarily a revenue-generating activity, not right away.” It helps but it’s not the first thing that’s going to get you customers. The biggest misconception about a personal brand is that it’s about you. It’s not. It’s always about the person you’re helping. For someone who’s leaving, who wants to leave in six months, they need to be crystal clear on what problem they solve for other people.
That’s one of the biggest mistakes people make in their marketing. They talk way too much about what they do and how great it is. They don’t talk nearly enough about the problem it solves for other people. If you think about big personal brands like Dave Ramsey, he is well known for solving the problem of debt. This is something I work with my clients to do is help them figure out what that one-word problem is. You’re going to be known for solving for other people where your name is synonymous with solving that problem. That’s one of the fastest ways to be known. It’ clarity and messaging. What is the problem that you’re going to be known for solving?
Another thing is being clear on what your short-term and long-term business model is. It’s having one primary business model that you’re focusing on first. It is going back to Sheehan’s Wall. It’s that, “What’s that number one thing you want people to do?” What’s that number one thing you want people to take action on when they hear about you or when they see your business? What’s that primary business model going to be? Have an idea of where you want to go long-term and how you want it to expand, but I would look at it in the first twelve months, “What’s my business model going to be? How am I going to make money?”
Know your numbers on it and do that and then promote. It’s going to feel like a lot of effort. It’s going to feel like a push and that is natural. There’s nothing wrong with that. You’re on the unknown side of the wall. It’s okay, you have to push. Once you breakthrough, it’s a different energy. It’s a different dynamic. It’s a different air on the other side. However, when you’re in it, you’ve got to be in it. You’ve got to be doing the promotion and do ten times what other people are doing if you have to get your voice heard. It’s part of the process at the beginning.
You’ve got to do the things that other people aren’t going to do. If you want to speak more, speak at smaller events, maybe free events, then build a name for yourself on what you focused on building, experiencing, and grow. I can remember many years ago, I was speaking in front of three people at a title company as my third gig. I was like, “There are three people at least that know me now versus nobody if I didn’t show up.”
There’s a great story about Tony Robbins that when he was first building his speaking career, he saw other people at Toastmasters going once a week and that was average. He thought, “I don’t want to be average. I want to have results much faster.” I think he went at least once a day, if not, multiple times a day at two different Toastmasters events because he thought, “If I can get more reps under my belt, I’m going to learn way faster.” It’s the same type of thing. Every single time you show up, every single time you do a podcast, every single time you do a speaking event, whatever it is you’re doing to build your brand, you’re getting a rep under your belt.
Building Brand Identity: If you can do more in a shorter amount of time, you’re going to have more concentrated results.
If you can do more in a shorter amount of time, you’re going to have more concentrated results. It makes sense, but it’s getting past that inertia and being willing to show up and be visible and put yourself out there. That’s part of why I feel like I’ve been successful because I’ve always been working under pressure and be like, “I made this big exit. I’ve got to get my income back up to where it was.” I have big goals. The more concentrated the effort, the faster the results. You don’t have time to worry about the fears, insecurity or anything like that when you’re going after a big goal in a short amount of time.
Talking about being visible, you’ve done a great job with that. How did that impact your life for the last couple of years?
It’s everything. Part of why I’m passionate about this too, Scott, is I grew up with crippling insecurities about how I looked and about what other people thought of me. I didn’t use to share a lot of this part of my story because I was still healing from it and getting past it. Anything that we’ve gone through in life that’s a struggle or a challenge, it’s something that we can turn and help other people who are going through the same thing. Growing up, I was very insecure about my looks and my weight. My dad is wonderful and I’ve got a great relationship with him, but he was traveling a lot.
I didn’t have a close relationship with him that I wanted. I grew up very insecure, specifically about my relationship with men. I ended up having an eating disorder in my teens. It was something I struggled with for seventeen years. I thought that the smaller I got, the more people would like me. In the beginning, that was true. I found that when I lost weight initially, I would get more attention. This was in my teen years. It ended up getting unhealthy. It took me a while to work through that. Seventeen years was a long time and I couldn’t get it faster. That was my journey.
That’s exactly what I am about to say. That’s your journey as young, but we all have to mature and figure things out.
I look back and sometimes I’m like, “I wish I had gotten it figured out faster.” It was my journey. It was the pace it was supposed to be. Part of why I am passionate about it is being on the other side of all of that. I realized how the bigger I get and the more myself I get in, the more I allow myself to be who I am. It doesn’t matter what other people think. Some people are going to love me. Some people are going to be totally turned off and that’s okay. It’s about them. If they’re turned off, it’s not about me. For a lot of my clients, they want to build personal brands. They want to have a successful business. They want to have a business that makes an impact and has a purpose. Some of them have big messages that they want to share on stages or in books. It’s a common thing that I hear is, “I’m afraid to be visible. I’m afraid to show up. I’m afraid of what people are going to say. I’m afraid of what people are going to think.”
Coming from my background of having dealt with so much of that myself over the years, I’m passionate about helping people own the fact that if they’re feeling called to build a brand, if they’re feeling called to be visible, the way you’ve done with your brand, there is a reason for that. Not everyone feels that call. If you’re feeling it, don’t question it. If you’re feeling it, it is for you. The only thing that’s going to trip you up is if you get stuck in your head about your own fears. When we feel fear, it’s because we’re thinking about ourselves. We can’t feel fear when we’re thinking about how to help someone else or how to be observed as we physically can’t. It’s impossible. It’s a journey. It takes a while to rewire those loops that have run in your brain for many years about the fear of what other people think. This is one of my favorite things to remind myself. When I personally have any fear of visibility is I have yet to be criticized by someone who’s more successful than me.
That is a strong quote. You’re right. Many people out there have these self-doubts and they worry. When we do an email blast or a video, we may get 100 likes and there’s that one person that trolls that leaves a bad review or a bad thing and we just focus on that. We take that to heart a lot of times and you’ve got to develop a thicker skin and realize what you said is one of the most powerful statements I’ve heard in a while, which is awesome.
It’s true. When you think about your mentors or your coaches or the people you look up to, you reach out to them and you’re like, “I want your feedback on this.” If they reach out to you, it’s always to give you a pat on the back to say, “I saw you put that video out there. I see you showing up. Great job.” You’re doing great because they know what it takes and they’re in the arena with you. The only people who are criticizing are the ones who are looking at what you’re doing. There’s an element of what you’re doing that they want for themselves.
They are mad at themselves that they haven’t done it yet so they are coming out directed at you. We have to remember that and have some sympathy for the fact that that’s what’s going on. There’s a level of unhappiness there. They see you as a mirror of what’s not happening in their life that they wish was. I try to remind myself and my clients of that and say, “Pay attention to the opinions of people who are doing it with you. Could you ask their opinion, who you look up to?” Everyone else, they’ll get there if they’re on their journey. It’s not about you when they’re throwing out anything hateful or critical.
It’s about them. It is funny that Gary Vaynerchuk had a quote, “Often, those that are throwing hater in the worst position, you’ve got to pray for them for the most part.” I love to ask you this question, where do you see yourself going in the next couple of months? What’s the big thing, at least that is on your goal sheet or your dry erase board as a goal that you’re working towards?
There are quite a few things. I’ve got my vision board up. You can’t see it, but there is some exciting stuff. There are some things that I’m working on that I can’t share publicly yet, but I will say, one of the things I’m passionate about is empowering. I work with both men and women. I’ve worked more with men over the years than women. It’s been a fun transitional time in my life because I’m feeling like supporting my power women in my circles. I’m creating some cool things, specifically for women who are looking to become more visible in their space. I’d say people stay tuned for that. I’ve created some curriculum and some programs to help people who are looking to build their brand on video specifically. It’s something I never thought I would do. It was not at all on the agenda, but over the years, I worked with a lot of clients who are excellent public speakers. They can stand on a stage and they can present to 1,000 people, 10,000 people and feel fine. They can present in a boardroom and feel fine.
A lot of them were telling me the behind scenes, like, “I need to start doing video and it freaks me out.” They hate turning on the camera. They hate the process. They don’t like the way they look. They don’t like the way they sound or whatever it is. I’ve developed some programs to help support people, specifically in the area of growing their brand on video. Some of it is the mindset, confidence things and helping them effectively communicate their message on that platform. That’s going on. I’m doing some cool international travel to India, to Marrakesh with a coaching program I’m a part of. My husband and I are working on expanding our family. We’re going down the adoption process and that’s exciting. There are a lot of big things. I’m grateful for the journey and I’m excited to see where it goes.
I’m going to flip it back a little bit. Has there been a hurdle or something that’s gotten in your way in the last years since you left corporate that were kind of, “I’ve got to work to get around this,” or get over anything that suddenly popped up that maybe slowed you down a little bit?
Building Brand Identity: When you have any fear of visibility, you are yet to be criticized by someone who’s more successful than you.
There are a million things.
The reason I brought it is because a lot of people when they see people having success, they only see that successful top of the iceberg. They don’t see the things that we struggle with and all the hurdles that we run through to get where we need to go.
The biggest and probably the one is I left corporate in 2015, but I ended up joining a sales coaching company where I was an independent contractor. I ran my own business, but I still had the support of a team. I became a partner in that company and then I exited. I wasn’t planning on exiting, but there are some things that happen that were very unexpected in the company where I felt like it was my time to go. When I exited, I left everything behind. That was very challenging. Part of what was challenging about it was that I had been very intentional about building a brand in the industry as we talked about. It was part of my deal in the exit was that all of that belonged to the company. I’ve been very ambitious about creating lots of video content and podcast content. All of that had to come down. I went from feeling like I was super visible and had built a strong reputation and brand to within a matter of a couple of days, feeling totally invisible, totally cut off from everything that I had built previously.
I haven’t shared a ton about this, but I’ll share it here because it’s been part of my journey. I’ve called the past year, like my year of three deaths. There’s been beauty on the other side of it. I want to preface all of this with that. I had that happen. It’s the death of a career. About a month after that, my podcast cohost Greg. There were three of us who cohosted the Linking Into Sales. It was Greg Hyer, Martin Brossman and myself. Greg passed away in his sleep at age 39 and it was unexpected. I went through a process of rebuilding my own brand during that time and that was challenging, but I also have enjoyed the process of reinvention. In February of this year, my husband and I were expecting our first child and we miscarried. It’s been a lot of challenges in the past couple of months. It made me think about though, not being afraid to go after what I want because I’ve had many lessons in the past in this period about nothing is forever and nothing is certain.
If we can learn to embrace what we want, listen to the nudges and see the stuff that feels hard as gifts, where it’s like, “This is happening for me.” Even with the miscarriage, there are many blessings and gifts that came from that. We moved into a different house because we’re ready to expand our family. We love our house now. We have a great house. I’m happy here. I hired a coach. I’ve been thinking about hiring for years. It has transformed my business. It has made me be more intentional about my work, preparing to have kids at some point and be able to have more time with them. It has taught me so much about life. All of these things have ended up being big blessings because I’ve grown through the process. I learned to appreciate every day more. I’m grateful and I know that it’s not the end of challenges. I think that I have a different perspective that everything is happening for me now. That’s been a big blessing.
Thank you for sharing first and foremost. That’s huge. I’m a big believer that God puts things in our way that we can get around him. He doesn’t give us anything more than what we can’t handle. Sometimes you’re like, “Help us out here. Help us out to overcome this stuff.” Many people are going through different things and that makes us stronger. There’s a way around it. I’m a big believer that we’ve got to grow into the individual that we want to become and it takes time to go through those growing pains and overcoming obstacles to get there. You’ve gone through some big things, but you’re here, you’re rocking and rolling. You’ve got a different view on life. I think that’s a big thing, how things can happen so fast and life is very precious for us all out there. I’ve had a couple of friends that have passed on suddenly out of the blue. You don’t take that for granted. It makes us show up a little bit more excitement and energy to work, to get things done in a faster way.
I’m such a dork now. I’ll literally think about the fact that I’m alive and I’ll get emotional. I’ll be in my workout class and I’ll be like, “This is cool. I’m alive.” It makes it so much fun. I heard a quote and it was like, “You already got out of bed. Everything else is all gravy.” We can get caught up in some of the challenges of the entrepreneurial process that if we can remember that like, “You made it out of bed, you’re alive. You’re doing well. Have fun.” Don’t take it too seriously. Go for what you want. Enjoy the process. It’s so much fun if you do it that way.
Have the ability to laugh at yourself too when you screw up and do other things. I think that is important, not to be so serious out there for sure. Elyse, you delivered such great knowledge, great counsel on the show. For our audience out there, what’s the best way for people to reach out to you and connect with if they want to find out more about your coaching and other things that you’re doing out there? What’s the best way for them to connect with you?
Thank you so much, Scott. This has been so fun. You’re a great host. Thank you for making this a blast. I’m on pretty much all social media @ElyseArcher. People can find me that way. We’ve got a great free course that people can take if they want to learn like how we’ve worked with some clients like Lewis Howes and Kevin Harrington to help them build their personal brands. It’s called First Step to Famous. It’s going to teach you what you need to know if you’re trying to get clear on what your personal brand is and how you’re going to build a reputation in this new industry. People can get that at EA.BrandBuildersGroup.com. They can request a free call with me on my website. I’m always happy to have a free brand strategy call and I like to hear what people are up to and to hear what their goals are. Having been on the journey myself, I love supporting other entrepreneurs who are looking to accomplish big things with their brands. I would love to connect with your audiences in any of those formats if it sounds good to them.
That’d be great. Go out and also check out her YouTube channel. Everybody, please subscribe out there. She has great stuff there. Also, check out the Instant Impact podcast with her as well on iTunes or anywhere else that podcasts are where you listen to it. Give a review and subscribe. It’s a phenomenal podcast. It’s been definitely binge-worthy over the last couple of days as well as we prepared for this interview. Elyse, thank you so much for showing up, playing it at full speed and give 100%. It makes it easy for me when we’ve got guests on that got a big heart and are willing to give to help others out, to overcome their obstacles and drive to do some big things. We’ve all got a message. There’s somebody out there that needs to hear what we’ve gone through, what we have to offer. If you’re a secret agent, man, or woman and not willing to share, you’re not only doing yourself a disservice, you do others the disservice out there.
It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much, Scott. It’s been a blast.
You’ll be able to check out all the links that Elyse mentioned. Take the counsel that Elyse gave. If you’ve got something you want to plan here in the next few months, start now, start working, start sharing those little nuggets. I know the biggest quote I think from hearing is, “Perfection is for poor people. Delivered will outperform perfection any day.” Start delivering in a chicken nugget type of way with your content, what you want to focus on, and get crystal clear on your message and where you want to be and where you want to go. It will make life a whole lot easier for you when you do make that jump. Go out and take some action. We’ll see you all at the top.
Important Links:
- Brand Builders Group
- Lynda.com
- Youtility
- School of Greatness
- Wine Library TV
- @ElyseArcher on Instagram
- EA.BrandBuildersGroup.com
- YouTube – Elyse’s YouTube channel
- Instant Impact
- iTunes – Instant Impact
- http://www.ElyseArcher.com/
About Elyse Archer
Elyse Archer is a Visibility Coach for purpose-driven leaders whose insights have been featured in major media including Forbes and Inc.
She is a keynote speaker and host of the podcast Instant Impact with Elyse Archer, where she shares best practices from top business leaders who have created extraordinary personal brands and world-class networks.