EP 530 – Building Your New Brand Identity with Elyse Archer

Foreign this is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for pennies on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now here's your host CEO of We Close notes, Scott Carson. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Note Closure Show. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to be here with the day and I am so freaking jacked up and excited for our special guest today who is going to drop some freaking knowledge bombs on all of you out there. I know so many of you guys in Note Nation across the country are in that position. That mindset of looking to transition, hey, you want to be a full time real estate investor, you want to tell that boss to take that job and shove it or you want to do some big things. But I see so many entrepreneurs struggle with kind of that dual message, hey, my employee or I'm an entrepreneur and how do I kind of transition into really being who you are, whether and you don't have to be Scott Carson. I don't want you to be Scott Carson. I want you to be you. Because there's only one of you. But we all have a message and we've all got strengths and things that set us apart. And so I'm really honored to have this rock star join us today. And I'm talking about the one, the only, Lise Archer. She is a visibility coach for Purpose Driven Leaders whose insights have been featured in major media including Forbes and Inc. She's a keynote speaker and host of the podcast Instant Impact, which I highly encourage you go out and check it out where she shares best practices from top business leaders who've created extraordinary personal brands and world class networks. And now this lady has been a brand expert for years. She's working with a ton of people in the sales aspect of the years, done just an amazing job transitioning and really becoming an expert in her space and providing so much great content and so much great nuggets to other people that she's working with. So I had to have her on. I followed her on LinkedIn a little bit. We were LinkedIn friends for a while and so she's posting there. I was like, she is gonna make a great guest for the Nutclosure show. So I'm so honored she's taking time out her busy day in Atlanta to join us here on the Nutclosure show. So Elise, welcome to the NCS podcast.

Scott, what an intro. I'm excited. Thank you for that. This is gonna be great.

Oh, yeah, definitely. Definitely gonna be fun. If you can't have fun at what you're doing, you're doing something wrong. The way I look at. Right. So, I mean, you've worked with some big names. I mean, you had a huge top. Was it top 10, top 14 podcast out there. Your co host, unfortunately passed away suddenly, and you've kind of transitioned to stuff like that. And so I thought it was really listening to your episode one and then some of the other ones out there. You're going through, like, that whole entrepreneurial or had gone through that whole entrepreneurial thing. You're translating from one thing to another. You want to talk a little about that before we dive into some more stuff?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when it comes to reinventing a personal brand, I can totally relate to anybody who feels like they're going through that. And when I first left corporate in 2015, all that I really knew was I no longer wanted to be in corporate. So some of your listeners may be able to relate to this, where they know that for whatever reason, the place that they are, it's no longer for them. And now that I work in the space of helping people kind of build a brand and transition effectively, I know all the things that I should have done in the order. But at the time, I kind of look back at it and I laugh because there was a lot that I did wrong at the time. 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. And I didn't have any clients. I didn't have really any knowledge of sales coaching. I knew how to sell, and I was good at it. So I thought, okay, I can teach other people how to do this. But part of what I look back on with why I was able to successfully do that and make that transition was all that I knew was I needed to be known. Right? It's like I didn't have a client base, I didn't have curriculum. And I think so many people spend so much time trying to get all the nuts and bolts and pieces in place. But if you're not known, if you don't have clients, if you don't have a reputation, then you don't have a business. And so the thing that I kind of accidentally did well was I went about building a brand and a reputation in that space, and I was very aggressive about promoting myself online, offline. And because of that, was able to quickly build up a great client base and have a successful career. And then you kind of mentioned this in the intro. About a year and a half ago, I exited that company and really had to go about reinventing myself again and rebuilding my personal brand. And I'm certainly happy to share, like, share steps, share strategies, share anything that would be useful to your audience. But I've done it twice now in the past five years and fortunately been successful in doing it both times. But it's been a learning process, and I made a ton of mistakes along the way, and I'm really passionate about helping anybody else who's kind of going through that transition and looking to brand themselves in a new space or make the leap out of corporate into being an entrepreneur. So, yeah, I like to think I've made all the mistakes and learned along the way and can hopefully help some people avoid some of the mistakes I made. And they're faster.

Well, in the spirit of the end of the year, Halloween, you know, we all go through different horror stories out there for a variety of reasons, and not necessarily true horror stories, but it can be very daunting of going and transitioning from one major thing to another one. You know, a lot of people struggle with it. And you mentioned something important about building an online reputation versus trying to build a course or clients, stuff like that. I think a lot of entrepreneurs try to do the whole perfection, like it got. It has to be perfect before I launch anything. And it's kind of the other way around, correct?

Oh, yeah. I mean, this is something I say to my clients all the time, but it's true. Perfectionism is for poor people. So you can choose to be perfect. You can choose to perfect the thing, but just know that every perfectionist I know is generally struggling to make money and they're struggling to grow their business. And so you got to make the choice, which one is it going to be for you?

Oh, that's such great stuff. Hang on. Hopefully you all heard that out there, all you control freaks. Cause we're all control freaks in the real estate space. And sometimes you've got to let things go. And I love it. Perfection is for poor people. Wow. I love it. That's the money shot right there. All right, so you talked a little bit about building your reputation online, and you talked through some of your different podcasts with some of your guests about having a reputation formula. You want to kind of dive into that why that matters to people.

Yeah, definitely. I was actually thinking about it. While you Were kind of talking in the last segment. People feel confusion about how do I build a brand, how do I get known and what is a personal brand? And I think at the end of the day, if we can just simplify it, having a strong personal brand in your industry is simply about having a strong reputation. The way that we break it down at Brand Builders Group is that your reputation is really comprised of two different things. It's your results multiplied by your reach. So results times reach equals your reputation. Here's what I mean by that. Results are really, what have you done in an industry, in a space in your life? What challenges have you overcome? What's your superpower? What do you do better than anybody else? So those are all important, right? Those are key pieces of building a brand. Now here's the thing. If you just stop there and you don't have any reach, nobody knows about you, you don't really have a reputation, right? It's kind of a net zero. And this is the thing that I think is a frustration for a lot of entrepreneurs is they feel like the best kept secret in their space. They're like, I'm really good at this, I have great customer service, I take good care of my clients, I have integrity, I'm ethical, but nobody knows about them. And so they don't have a reputation. So equally important is your reach. And your reach is really who knows about you, who knows about what you've done. When someone says, hey, I'm looking for guidance in the space of real estate investing, or I'm looking for someone to help me here, are you the first person that someone thinks of or is it someone else? And that really speaks to your reach. How many people know about you? You need both in order to have a reputation. You can't really have one or the other. This is something that I'm also passionate about too, is if you have a big reach but you don't have great results, that's not a strong reputation either. So to me, it's really critical to cultivate both to get excellent at what you do to continuing education, hone your skills, get better and better, hire a coach, get training, get really good at what you do. But then you can't shy away from letting people know about it. And 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 listeners and your clients where people feel really strange about promoting themselves and they say it feels gross, it feels egotistical, and 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 because somebody needs you. Somebody needs someone like you, who does a great job, has integrity. And so it really. You can't make building a personal brand about you. You've got to make it about being visible for the people you're serving and helping. So those are the two things. Results multiplied by your reach is how you develop a rock solid reputation.

Now, what do you think is. And I kind of know the answer already, but where do you think the biggest bang for buck is for people to get the word out on what they're doing these days? Are you thinking blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, video podcasts? I mean, I know my kind of answer, what we've built our stuff on the last decade, but I think I want to hear it from you.

Yeah, it's a great question. And I think at the end of the day, it can be different for different people. So 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. And 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 and I didn't really know how to do that. So I kind of tried everything. I created a local networking group, I went and I spoke at events, I had a podcast, I did everything. 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. And it's interesting because I think more and more people today are picking up on that because I noticed on LinkedIn specifically, it's getting more saturated and all of a sudden people are like, this is amazing. I'm getting so much organic reach. I had no idea this was here. And I'm like, guys, get away. Like, you're crowding my space.

You're Vaynerchuk, shut up and get off.

It's cool to see that it how well it works and that it works so well for other people. And again, I think it really depends on who your audience is. If your audience is there on LinkedIn, I think being visible there, creating video content, you're going to get pretty good engagement. But if your audience is different, you know, a lot of my clients have been super successful building big Instagram brands. That was actually never a focus of mine. And now it's funny because so many of my clients are on there and I feel like I'm playing catch up. You just have to go where your people are and then typically video content is going to convert way better than anything else.

Yeah, I'm a big, huge fan of video. We've been doing videos for years. We got thousands of videos and I think that's a great way for people to get a chance to know you Build rapport without actually maybe being in front of them. It's 24 hour a day advertising. It's the second largest search engine. You're pulling yourself to YouTube. You said something really good about, hey, you're getting a lot of organic reach on LinkedIn. And it doesn't have to be hour long, two hour long webinars. It's before the LinkedIn live. It's what, 10, 15 minutes is the max you're have on there. And it's that bite size, digestible nuggets of content that I think work really, really well there. Would you agree?

Oh, totally, yeah. Short, sweet, like one to three minutes max. And this is something that we teach. There's a great book on this called Utility by Jay Baer. I don't know if you've read it, but I highly encourage all your listeners to read it. And basically what he teaches is you take one thing at a time. It's like 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. And so what happens is I think sometimes people feel, they feel fear about sharing everything they know for free. Because I think, why would someone hire me? And I think it's actually the opposite. I think the more you can, and I think you've done a really good job of this, the more you can be visible and add value and just continue to show up and share what you know. People don't pay for information today. They pay for organization and application. So it doesn't hurt you to give away everything that you know because people will, they'll get it. But it's like 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 customers.

Good for you, man.

Right, Good for you. Yeah, but think about even in my own life, like a coach that I signed up with this year, I followed her for years and I got so much value out of her content that I have now invested a very significant amount of money with her in a short amount of time. But it was because she was so generous with what she shared and she changed my life before I ever paid her. And I think that's like, to me, how can we do that? Right? How can we change people's lives before they ever pay us? Because when I thought about it, it was like, if I've gotten this much out of her without paying her, what would be possible if I did? And so it's just having that mindset of generosity, sharing, giving away everything, you know, knowing that in some way, shape or form, it's going to come back to you.

That's such a great, great comment there. Because I think that's a lot of people worry about that, especially entrepreneurs, especially in the real estate space. We talk with people and I go, I don't want to give way 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 you're. They're going to get. And in today's world, specifically with Khan Academy and Lynda.com and all the videos, stuff like that, you've really got to provide some content online. And I like what you said. Hey, put it in random order. If somebody wants to take the time to figure it all out, put in an A to Z group. Good for them. They're probably not going to be your client anyway, but a lot of people will see that value. And it takes, as you said, time for somebody to write a big check or invest with you as a coach or a client. And that video builds rapport. We get that all the time. Have been watching you for three or six months now. I'm ready to do something with you.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's interesting. This is the most recent number that I've heard is that. And I do a fair amount of work in the online coaching space, so I know a lot of the numbers here. But for coaches in particular, people are following them anywhere from one to three years before they decide to hire them. And I think it speaks so much to playing the long game. And I think 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 reputation. It takes a while. And 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, like giving back in the community. And playing the long game. And it's not only do you get better long term results, but it's more fun. It's way more fun. And so for anyone who's listening, who's thinking about how do I build a reputation in a space and 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. Video's your thing. Like be visible on video. It's a powerful tool. To me, generosity is a time bender. So the more generous you are, the faster you can get the results you're looking for. And it's something I've experienced in my own life. You've probably experienced it too. But I'm just so passionate about teaching people to not be. The more in scarcity and fear you are, the more you're going to hold yourself back from everything you want. So show up, be generous, the results follow.

Let's talk about. I mean, I love that. I totally 100% agree with you, but I know people are listening out there. You talk about the long game. I wanted to leave my job or I want this to success, rock up, you know, do some big things. I may not have the time to do this in the long thing. And that's why I tell people like, hey, just start planning now for next year. What's your. Is there a timeframe that you tell people that need to kind of start plan applauding, you know, make that transition or start putting assets in place now if they're planning something six months from now? Or what's.

What's definitely, I mean, I think the sooner you can start building up like reputation equity in your space, the better. So if you know you're going to leave, start building your brand now. And I did it differently, quite frankly. When I left corporate, I had six months of savings to my name. I don't advise necessarily doing it that way. I work well under pressure, so it worked for me. He was my boyfriend at the time, he's my husband now. He had just moved in and he'd been there for about a week or two. And I said, babe, I think I'm ready to quit my job. And he's like, was this pre planned the whole time?

Am I your sugar daddy?

No, he's a good man. He stuck with me through it and I made it work. But I think the reason why I made it work was 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. When I exited my old company and started this company about a year and a half ago, I had a multiple six figure business within a little over a year. You can do it. And obviously the amount of money you make is going to depend on your industry. Like, your listeners can make great money in their industry. They can do better than I have. 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. It was like I did anything it took. And I also did the more proactive kind of 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. And then my goal for all of my clients and also what I've done is try to get to the point where you have such a strong reputation in your space that you get enough inbound opportunities that you don't have to go out and do that, the prospecting game anymore, but you do what you need to do until you don't have to do it anymore.

I love that. I love it. Definitely. Now you talk a lot about Sheehan's wallet. Can you explain a little bit about that to our listeners? Kind of what Sheehan's wall is and the importance of that?

Yeah, definitely. You know, I think the biggest challenge that most entrepreneurs face today, it's noise. There's so many people vying for the attention of your customers, of your referral partners. It's how do you get seen and heard above everybody else? And it's a big challenge. And so it's one of the concepts, it's kind of the core concept, what we teach at Brand Builders Group. And the concept behind it is that there's a guy named Peter Sheehan and he studies brands and businesses that really rise to the top of their class versus the ones that don't. And essentially what he says, Scott, is in every industry, you've got this invisible wall. And on one side of the wall, you've got people who are well known, and on the other side you've got people who aren't as well known. So on the side of the known, it's like opportunity, money, clients. On the side of the unknown, it's noise, obscurity, lack. And 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 break through. But the challenge and the reason why most of them never do is that they're never clear enough on some really foundational questions that you need to know to have a really clear, successful brand. What problem do you solve? Who do you solve it for? What's your message? What's your uniqueness? And how are you going to reach your people? What's your marketing strategy? Because 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 really break through. So they may kind of come up close to it, but then they bounce back off. And so the people who do break through the wall are the ones who get hyper focused, and they get very, 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. And with that focus, it's just a matter of time, with enough consistency and velocity and momentum that they're able to break through that wall. And then what happens is 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 or do or promote, People are going to listen and trust her because she's Oprah. I think for a lot of people building personal brands today, that's incredible to think about, is what would it look like if I could really just do what I wanted, talk about what I want, sell what I want, promote what I want, and people will listen and they'll want to take action because I am me. And the dynamic that shifts is on the side of the unknown. Everything feels like a push, so it feels hard. You're having to reach out and introduce yourself. You're having to pitch, you're having to tell people about why they should work with you. On the side of the known, though, it's a 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's so many examples of this, But I think this is one of the mistakes that people make, is they see the really successful brands and businesses in their space and they see them having all these different revenue streams and all these different products and talking about all this different stuff online. I think, okay, that's how I'm going to get there too. And it's not the case. Probably. One of our better known clients is a guy named Lewis Howes who hosts a top podcast and some of your listeners may listen to him.

The School of Greatness.

What was that?

The School of Greatness.

School of Greatness. Yeah. Yeah. And not everyone knows this about Louis, but some people will. The way he initially broke through the wall was by building a brand based around LinkedIn. And he really focused on becoming known as the LinkedIn guy. And he did that for years. And it wasn't until he really got that momentum going that he was able to break through. And now he can kind of do what he wants and people will listen and they'll buy from him. So he. It happens every single time. Gary Vee same thing. Wine Library TV went all on all in on that for years. Broke through. Now he can have a sneaker line and a top marketing agency and talk about the New York jets and it's like people will listen because it's him. So that's the key. That's kind of the hidden thing you see behind this. You don't see that happens behind the scenes with big personal brands is there is extreme focus on becoming known for one thing first and then the world opens up afterwards.

Yeah, Gary V. Definitely. Wine Library tv. Hopefully he buys the jets pretty soon. Doing some horribly out there, but I call it kind of the BB gun effect. Yeah, I think a lot of entrepreneurs are. They're shooting in so many different directions and it's not making an impact on the wall where if they took all those pellets in one and as you said, being very focused, they could actually make a bigger dent impact on that wall to break through faster. But what are some of the key components or key things that you think entrepreneurs are budding? Entrepreneurs that are leaving the job force to go on their own really need to focus on maybe one or two or maybe three things that they need to make as a priority versus it being kind of a back burner kind of thing while they're running around trying to do everything, their llc, their website, their social handles, all that stuff. What's kind of the three big things that are big musts for success?

Yeah, it's, you know, it's such a great question, Scott. I think it's going to be different depending on your timeframe. So I think let's say six months.

Let's say six months.

Well, okay, six months. You need clients. If you've got a long Runway and that doesn't really matter to you, then you kind of have more time to just have fun with building your brand and building your 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. And like, that's great. However, a podcast is not necessarily a revenue generating activity. Not right away. Right. It helps, but it's not the first thing that's going to get you customers necessarily. So I think it's 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. So for someone who's leaving, who wants to leave in six months, I think 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 is they talk way too much about what they do and how great it is and they don't talk nearly enough about the problem it solves for other people. So if you think about big personal brands like Dave Ramsey, right, He is so well known for solving the problem of debt. And this is something I work with my clients to do, is help them figure out what is that one word problem 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. So it's clarity and messaging. What is the problem that you're going to be known for solving? I think another thing is being really clear on what's your short term and long term business model. So having one primary business model that you're focusing on first, again, it's kind of going back to Sheehan's wallet. It's like, what's that number one thing you want people to do? That number one thing you want people to take action on when they hear about you, 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, in the first 12 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 it's like, promote, promote, promote, promote, promote, promote. And know that 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. Again, you're on the unknown side of the wall. It's okay. You have to push. But once you break through, 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 gotta be in it. You gotta be doing the promotion and do 10 times what other people are doing if you have to, to get your voice heard right. It's just. It's part of the process at the beginning.

Well, I love exactly what you said. You've gotta do the things that other people aren't going to do. I mean, if you want to speak more, speak at smaller events, maybe free events, then build a name for yourself on what you're focused on, build that experience and grow. I mean, I can remember back 10 years ago, I was speaking in front of three people at a title company one time. Now, my third gig, I was like, okay, it's three people at least that know me now versus nobody if I didn't show up.

Absolutely, absolutely. There's a great story about this with Tony Robbins, that when he was first building his speaking career, he saw other people at Toastmasters who were going. And they were going once a week, and that was kind of average. And he thought, okay, well, I don't want to be average. I want to have results much faster. So I think he went, it was like once a day. It was at least once a day, if not multiple times a day. Two different Toastmasters events. Because he thought, if I can just get more reps under my belt, I'm going to learn way faster. So it's the same type of thing. It's 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. And if you can just do more in a shorter amount of time, you're going to have more concentrated results. It just makes sense. But it's getting past that inertia and being willing to show up and be visible and. And put yourself out there. That. I think that's part of why I feel like I've been successful is I've always been working under pressure, that, hey, I need to get, like, I just made this big exit. I got to get my income back up to where it was, or I have big goals. And so the More concentrated the effort, the faster the results. And you don't have time to worry about fears or insecurity or anything like that when you're going after a big goal in a short amount of time.

Now, talking about being visible, you've done a great job with that. How has that kind of impacted your life over the last couple years?

Yeah, I mean, it's everything. And part of why I'm passionate about this, too, Scott, is I grew up with really crippling insecurities about how I looked, about what other people thought of me. I didn't used to share a lot of this part of my story, but I think because I was still healing from it and getting past it. But I think anything that we've gone through in life that's a struggle or a challenge, it's something that we can then turn and help other people who are going through the same thing. And so, yeah, growing up, I was very insecure about my looks, about my weight. My dad is wonderful, and I've got a great relationship with him now, but he just was traveling a lot. I didn't have the close relationship with him that I wanted, so I really grew up just very insecure, specifically about my relationship with men, and so ended up having an eating disorder in my teens. And it was something I struggled with for actually 17 years. And what I thought was that the smaller I got, the more people would like me. And at the beginning, that was actually true. I found that when I lost weight initially, I would get more attention. This is in my teen years, and it ended up getting really unhealthy. And so it took me a while to work through that. I mean, it's like 17 years. That's a long time. Couldn't you get it faster? That was just my journey.

That's exactly what I was going to say. That's your journey as a young. We all have to mature and figure things out.

No, no, absolutely. You are so right. Right. It's like I look back and sometimes I am like, I wish I had gotten it figured out faster, but it was my journey, and it was the pace it was supposed to be. But part of why I'm really passionate about it is now kind of being on the other side of all of that. I realize how the bigger I get and the more myself I get and the more I allow myself to just be who I am, it's like, 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. And so for a lot of my clients, they want to build personal brands. They want to have a really successful business. They want to have a business that makes an impact and has purpose. And some of them have big messages they want to share on stages or in books. And 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. And so, coming from my background of having dealt with so much of that myself over the years, I'm so passionate about helping people really own the fact. If they're feeling called to build a brand, if they're feeling called to be visible, like the way you've done with your brand, there is a reason for that. Not everyone feels that call. And so if you're feeling it, don't question it. Right. If you're feeling it, it is for you. And the only thing that's going to kind of trip you up is if you get so stuck in your head about your own fears. And 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 of service like we physically can't. It's impossible. And I also know it's a journey. It takes a while to kind of rewire those loops that have run in your brain for so many years about fear of what other people think. But this is one of my. Just my favorite things to remind myself when I personally have any sort of fears of visibility is I have yet to be criticized by someone who's more successful than me.

Oh my gosh, hang on a second. I have yet to be criticized by somebody who's more successful than me. That is a strong, strong quote there because you're so right. So many people out there have these self doubts. They worry. We do an email blast or a video and we may get 100 likes and there's that one person, that troll that leaves a bad review or a bad thing and we just focus on that and we take that to heart a lot of times. And you've really got to kind of develop a thicker skin and realize what you just said is one of the most powerful statements I've heard in a while, which is awesome.

Yeah. And it's so true. I mean, 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, hey, I want your feedback on this. Or if they reach out to you, it's always to, like, give you a pat on the back to say, hey, I saw you put that video out there. I saw you. You showing up like, great job. You're doing so 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, and there's an element of what you're doing that they want for themselves, and they are mad at themselves that they haven't done it yet. And so it's coming out directed at you. But we just have to remember that and have some sympathy for the fact that that's actually what's going on and that there's a level of unhappiness there and they just. They see you as a mirror of what's not happening in their life that they wish was. So I just, I try to remind myself that and my clients of that, that, hey, pay attention to the opinions of people who are doing it with you, who you ask their opinion, who you look up to, everyone else. They'll get there. They're on their journey. It's not about you. When they're throwing out anything hateful or critical.

Yeah, it's really about them. And it's funny. Gary Vaynerchuk. I got a quote last night that often those that are throwing hater in a worse position, you got to pray for them for the most part. I love to ask this question here. Where do you see yourself going in the next 12 to 24 months? What's the big thing that Elise has on her goal sheet or her dry erase board? Is it kind of a goal that you're working towards?

Yeah, well, quite a few things, actually. I've got my vision board up here to the left, so I know you can't see it, but some exciting stuff. So some things that I'm working on that I can't share publicly yet. But I will say one of the things I'm really passionate about right now is empowering. I work with both men and women. I've actually worked more with men over the years than women. And it's been kind of a fun transitional time in my life because I'm really feeling like supporting my power women in my circle. So I'm creating some cool things specifically for women who are looking to become more visible in their space. And so I'd say, people kind of stay tuned for that. I also, I've created some curriculum and some programs to help people who are looking to build their brand on video specifically. And it's something I never thought I would do. It was like, it was not at all on the agenda. But what happened over the years is I've worked with a lot of clients who are excellent public speakers. You know, they can stand on a stage and they could present to a thousand people, ten thousand people, and feel fine, or they can present in a boardroom and feel fine. What I found was that a lot of them were telling me kind of behind the 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. So I've developed some programs to really help support people, specifically in the area of growing their brand on video. Kind of some of the mindset confidence things, and then just really helping them effectively communicate their message on that platform. So that's going on. I'm doing some cool international travel to India, to Marrakesh with the coaching program I'm a part of. My husband and I are working on expanding our family. We're kind of going down the adoption process. So that's exciting. So, I mean, lots of big things. It's like, I'm just. I'm grateful for the journey, and I'm excited to see where it goes.

That's awesome. Now I'm going to flip it back a little bit. Has there been a hurdle or something that's kind of gotten in your way in the last two years, two plus years since you left corporate, that was really kind of, ugh. I got to work to get around this or get over any thing that just suddenly popped up that maybe slowed you down a little bit?

Oh, a million things.

I know the answer, but which one would you like? But the reason I want, I brought up like an individual, because I think 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. Right?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So the biggest and probably the most recent one. So I left corporate in 2015, but I ended up joining a sales coaching company where I was an independent contractor. So it was. I ran my own business, but I still had support of a team, became a partner in that company, and I exited about a year and a half ago, and when I wasn't planning on exiting, there were some things that happened that were very unexpected in the company where I just 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 earlier on this podcast. And it was just part of my deal in the Exit was that all of that belonged to the company. So been very ambitious about creating lots of video content and podcast content, and all of that had to come down. And so 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'll share it here because it's really 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. So I want to preface all this with that. But I had that happen, so it's kind of like the death of a career. About a month after that, my podcast co host, Greg. There are three of us who co hosted the Linking Into Sales. It was Greg hired Martin Brosman and myself. Greg passed away in his sleep at age 39. It was so unexpected. And so I kind of 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. And then in February of this year, my husband and I were expecting our first child and we miscarried. And so it's been a lot of challenge in the past 12, 18 months. What it's made me think about, though, is not being afraid to really go after what I want, because I've had so many lessons in the past in this period about nothing is forever and nothing is certain. And so I think if we can learn to really embrace what we want and listen to the nudges and see the stuff that feels really hard as gifts, where it's like, this is happening. For me, the miscarriage, there are so many blessings that came from that. We moved into a different house because we're like, we're ready to expand our family. We love our house now. We have a great house. So happy here. I hired a coach I've been thinking about hiring for years, and it's like it's transformed my business. It's made me be way more just intentional about my work, preparing to hopefully have kids at some point and be able to have more time with them. It's taught me so much about life. All of these things have ended up being big blessings because I've grown through the process, and I think I've just learned to really appreciate every day more. I'm grateful, and I know that it's not the end of challenges, but I also. I think I have a different perspective that everything is happening for me now, and that's been a big blessing.

Wow. Thank you for sharing. First and foremost, that's huge. And that's. 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 that we can't handle. And sometimes you're like, man, come on, God, help us out here. Help a guy or gal out to overcome this stuff. And it's. So many people are going through different things, and that's the thing, is it makes us stronger. There's a weight around it. I'm a big believer that we've got to grow into the individual that we want to become, and it just takes time to go through those growth pains and overcoming obstacles to really get there. But, I mean, yeah, 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. I've had a couple friends that have passed on suddenly, out of the blue here. And so you don't take that for granted. I think it makes us to show up a little bit more excitement and energy to really work to get things done in a faster way.

Yeah, I'm such a dork now. Like, I'll literally think about the fact that I'm alive and I'll get emotional. I'll be. My workout class. I'll be like, this is so cool. I'm alive right now. You know, it makes it so much fun. It makes the whole. If you can just. Like, I heard a quote the other day. It was like, you already got out of bed. Everything else is just gravy. Like, we can get so caught up in some of the challenges of the entrepreneurial process that if we can just remember that, like, hey, you made it out of bed. You're alive. Like, you're doing well. Have fun. Don't take it too seriously. Go for what you want. Enjoy the process. It's just so much fun if you do it that way.

Yeah. Have the ability to laugh at yourself too when you screw up and do other things I think is important out there and not be so serious out there for sure. But Elise, you've delivered such great, great knowledge here. Great counsel on the podcast today for those that are listening out there, I mean our audience out there, what's the best way for people to reach out to you or connect with you, Want to find more about your coaching and other things that you're doing out there. What's the best way for them to connect with you?

Yeah. Thank you so much Scott. This has been so, I mean you're a great host, so thank you for making this a blast. So I'm on pretty much all social media leasearcher so people can find me that way. Elise with a Y. And yeah, we've got a really I think it's a great free course that people can take if they want to learn like how we worked with some clients like a Lewis Howes, a Kevin Harrington to help them really build their personal brands. It's called First Step to Famous and so it's going to teach you what do 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. So people can get that at EA for Elise Archer. So 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 just hear what people are up to and hear what their goals are. Having been on the journey myself, I love supporting other entrepreneurs who are who are looking to accomplish big things with their brand. So would love to connect with your listeners in any of those formats. If they sound good to them, that'd be great.

Go out and also check out her YouTube channel. Everybody too. I subscribed out there. Great stuff there. Then also check out the Instant Impact podcast with her as well on itunes or anywhere else that podcasts where you listen to it. Great, great stuff. Give her a review. Subscribe. It's a phenomenal podcast. It's been definitely binge worthy over the last couple days as we prepared for this interview. But at least thank you so much for showing up, playing it at full speed and giving 100%. It makes it easy as me when we've got guests on that are just got a big heart and are willing to give to help others out there overcome their obstacles and really, really drive to do some big things. Because I think like you said early on. We've all got a message. There's somebody out there that needs to hear what we've gone through or what we have to offer. And if you're a secret agent, man or woman, and not willing to share it, you're really not only doing yourself a disservice, you're doing others a disservice out there. So thanks for showing up and playing big today.

My pleasure. Thank you so much, Scott. It's been a blast.

Oh, yeah, definitely. All right, guys and gals, that's going to wrap it up for this episode. You'll be able to check out all the links at least mentioned. We'll have that in the show notes. You can check it out@weclosenotes.com under the podcast. But once again, guys and gals, take the counsel that Elise gave today. If you've got something you want to plan here in the next six months, start now. Start working. Start sharing those little nuggets. The biggest quote I think from here is perfection is for poor people. All right? Delivered will outperform perfection any day. So 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. And it'll make life a whole lot easier for you when you do make that jump. So go out, take some action, everybody, and we'll see you all at the top.

Bye.