Learn how education entrepreneurs can transcend a crazy busy lifestyle with executive career and mindset coach Elizabeth Pearson in this episode of the LMScast podcast with Chris Badgett of LifterLMS. Elizabeth speaks to her passion about helping women get unstuck and uncover the limiting beliefs that hold them back from getting promotions and tapping into their true passions.
Elizabeth is an executive career and mindset coach, and she’s also a program developer in the sense that she helps people move through a process. Elizabeth works as a speaker, success coach, and author of the forthcoming book I’m Too Busy, and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves That Keep Us Stuck. She is a money mindset expert specializing in helping women entrepreneurs and executives increase their income by an additional six figures within a year.
In 2016 Elizabeth launched her coaching business part-time while leading a skincare company as a C-level executive. She ended up leaving her six-figure income so she could better serve her coaching clients, and she achieved that six-figure income working for herself and her clients in her first year of running her business full-time.
The concept of being too busy is something Elizabeth brings attention to and rejects in this episode. She shares how time management is something key to success, especially with a business that revolves around you. So it is not something to be proud of, rather it is something that will run you into the ground.
When we look at successful people in our field or an industry similar to ours, we often compare our businesses and income to theirs and become discouraged. Elizabeth talks about the idea that there are billions of people on Earth, and most of them are looking for support in some way. So there are absolutely opportunities out there to create a thriving business as long as your attention is around supporting others.
To learn more about mindset coach Elizabeth Pearson and her course, be sure to check out ElizabethPearson.com. She offers a free discovery call, so if you’re interested in getting in touch with her you can find that on her website.
At LifterLMS.com you can learn more about new developments and how you can use LifterLMS to build online courses and membership sites. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates, developments, and future episodes of LMScast. If you like this episode of LMScast, you can browse more episodes here. Thank you for joining us!
Episode Transcript
Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re a course creator looking to build more impact, income, and freedom. LMScast is the number one podcast for course creators just like you. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co-founder of the most powerful tool for building, selling, and protecting engaging online courses called LifterLMS. Enjoy the show.
Chris Badgett: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. We’re joined by a special guest, Elizabeth Pearson. How are you doing, Elizabeth?
Elizabeth P.: I’m fantastic, Chris. How are you?
Chris Badgett: Doing very well. She is a executive career and mindset coach, and she’s also a program developer in the sense that she helps people move through a process. We’re going to talk about what she does, we’re going to talk about her story, and I’m going to mine as much value as I can out of your life, because there’s a lot going on here, and I’m just going to go through your bio here. Elizabeth Pearson in a speaker, success coach, and author of the forthcoming book I’m Too Busy, And Other Lies We Tell Ourselves That Keep Us Stuck. She is a money mindset expert specializing in helping women entrepreneurs and executives increase their income by at least an additional six figures within a year. She’s passionate about helping women get unstuck, uncovering limiting beliefs and energetic blocks, and the routinely helps her clients get promotions, large salary raises and tap into their true passions. During this process she helps them identify their calling so that they can do what they love and make a great living with it. With a BA in journalism, Elizabeth climbed the career ladder in the traditional corporate world, where she managed multimillion dollar accounts like Target, Walmart, Amazon, Costco, Whole Foods, Disney, Ulta, CVS, Walgreens, vitaminwater, smartwater, B&G Foods, Pirate’s Booty, Skinfix and more.
Chris Badgett: After launching her coaching business part-time in 2016 while leading a skincare company as a C-level executive, Elizabeth left her corporate career that provided a multi six-figure income so that she could better serve her coaching clients. Having achieved six figures in her first year running the business full-time, Elizabeth continues to grow and support her clients, who typically see significant improvement within just a few weeks of working with her. She’s a contributor to Forbes Magazine, she regularly appears in media both in business and spiritual publications. Elizabeth’s guidance inspired her then four-year-old daughter Delilah to launch her own nonprofit, Delilah’s Donations where they’re raised over $5,000 for St. Jude Children Hospital within a few weeks. They were able to do this because Delilah requested all friends and relatives to make donations in lieu of gifts for her birthday. Over the last two years donating birthday gifts became a tradition both in the family and amongst the friends whose birthday parties Delilah attends. She’s originally from St. Louis, Missouri. Elizabeth now lives with her two young daughters and husband in Laguna Niguel, California. To learn more about her to can find her at ElizabethPearson.com. I’m stoked to get into it. I want to start right where your book title is which is I’m Too Busy.
Elizabeth P.: Yeah.
Chris Badgett: As an entrepreneur, running around with education entrepreneurs, people building courses and membership sites, I would say they’re even busier than most because they have to do all these things. They have to build a business, they have to teach, they have to get involved with all of this technology to make everything function. They have to grow an audience, build community. I hear the words, “I’m too busy.” Or even more common, “Crazy busy.” It’s just part of the vernacular and it’s accepted. What’s your angle with the book and what mindset change happens to get people out of this I’m too busy, because it seems like an impossible job.
Elizabeth P.: Yeah. Well I think the first thing to tell yourself is that I’m too busy and that statement, oh, I’m drinking from a fire hose or whatever the other cliches are that are floating out there, it’s not something to be proud of, right? So I think somehow in our culture it’s been twisted into this badge of honor, right? We’ve really equated our level of business with how important we are, right? Or maybe even our self-worth. So we say that with a lot of pride, “Well, I’m crazy busy. I’m swamped.” All of these things, but at the end of the day, when you are crazy busy, that means shit’s falling through the cracks somewhere. Something is happening in your life that you’re not giving enough focus to, whether it be your family, your personal life, your business or yourself. So what I tend to do with clients and the purpose of the book is to get people to snap out of it, right? This is not something to be proud of. This is something that will run you into the ground and you’ll end up being a master of none if you become so busy and distracted in your life that you can’t focus on what the true priorities are.
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. Yeah, I think it’s, I have a software company, so in our company culture we intentionally just developed a company culture where we don’t brag about how late we stayed up, or what we did over the weekend, or whatever. That’s not a badge of honor. So I totally get what you’re saying there.
Elizabeth P.: I always think of it as George Costanza. We’ve all seen that episode of Seinfeld when he’s not really doing anything but he acts really busy when his boss comes in. Half the time if somebody is coming up to me, especially people that I managed in my previous corporate life, if they came to me and were super busy, I saw that as a huge weakness. It was because they had sloppy time management, they didn’t know how to prioritize, and they probably weren’t actually executing projects to completion. A lot of times that’s how we get distracted, and we start doing a little bit of everything. So exactly, Chris, to your point, it really isn’t something to be proud of. We don’t have to be Zen all day. I know that that’s not realistic either, but there are things that you can do to start to minimize your stress and make sure that you’re focused, right? All the big overachievers.
Elizabeth P.: I just watched that wonderful, I’m late to the game, on the Tom Brady Facebook thing, but throughout a lot of these overachievers, whether it’s Tony Robbins, all these guys, they talk about focus. You have to be focused, and it’s okay to be busy, right? But what we don’t want to do is be so frazzled and unfocused that we’re crazy busy, or we’re swamped, or we can’t keep up. I think that actually has the opposite effect of what some people are going for, especially if you’re talking to clients and you say you’re very busy, or even family members. It makes you look kind of like a hot mess. You need to focus your efforts so that you can actually complete something, and then speak about that with pride instead of the business.
Chris Badgett: Love it. You’re a mindset coach and mindset is everything. I mean, I’m trying to think of, I’ll come up with a specific example of something where I started about something different and everything changed. Probably just like that example of I read a book called Work the System by a guy named Sam Carpenter, and he talked about how when he would go on vacation or trips with people, other business people or whatever, people would talk about how many emails would be waiting for them when they got back, where he was proud that he had a system and a team in place that he wasn’t really going to, it wasn’t going to be any different. Just changing that mindset is everything but.
Elizabeth P.: Absolutely.
Chris Badgett: You help people also with money mindset, and I think mindset coaching specifically or just in teaching and education in general, when you’re teaching mindset, some of it seems obvious. If I think about money mindset, you need to value yourself, or you need to charge what you’re worth.
Elizabeth P.: It’s easier said than done.
Chris Badgett: Yeah. So how do you, what is money mindset? And I’m sure I have all kinds of blocks and stuff too.
Elizabeth P.: Oh yeah, everybody’s got them.
Chris Badgett: [crosstalk] Yeah.
Elizabeth P.: Everybody’s got them. There’s so many that kind of come to the surface, and first and foremost I actually do career coaching, but mindset, it’s career and mindset because I feel like they are completely intertwined, and if you want to be successful in any area of your life you have to have the right mindset, and to your point, you can read a book that says, “Value yourself.” Or you can take a free webinar and it says, “Oh, do these things.” And that’s great, and information is helpful no matter where you get it, but if you don’t actually ingest it and start believing it and walking the walk, your external reality is not going to change. So one of the biggest mindset blocks that I had which affected my money in the beginning was this lack mentality.
Elizabeth P.: I thought that there were enough coaches out there. The world didn’t need some Lewis Howes, Gaby Bernstein mash-up, right? Which is two people that I really look to be similar to, and I found myself trying to force myself into this pigeonhole that I created of I need to be this to this person, and at the end of the day, I actually learned from both of them that when we start looking to competition and feeling like we can never catch up, right? The world doesn’t need anther you. That that’s actually at the point where you should keep rooting for whoever these idols are, maybe it’s GaryVee, whoever you have as an idol. Root for their success, don’t feel knocked down by the next announcement that they’re getting another book deal, or they’re getting this and you feel like, “Oh shit, I’m really not going to, I’m never going to catch up. I’m never going to catch up to these people.” Because what’s so important to the purpose of each one of your listeners is that they’re living their truth, because at the end of the day, when you are 100% yourself and you’re authentic, you do bring value to clients and customers. So every perspective is different, and I heard someone day to me once, “It takes 13 different impression before somebody really starts to open up and adopt a theory or a message.”
Elizabeth P.: So as long as you’re along that journey for however it is out there, the billions of people out there that are looking for support and help in an area of their business or their life, then you’re making an impact, and I feel like any time you make an impact in a positive way with a positive intention it is a ripple effect and then your tribe will start showing up for you, but that was the hardest thing for me to learn, I thought, “I can’t charge what I’m charging for these people.” Because I didn’t have confidence in myself, but then once I got a few clients under my belt and I saw dramatic results within four months for them, I was like, “Well okay, I’m starting to believe that now.” To your point, I started to really believe my worth and start charging what I was worth, and the more you feel comfortable and confident in that, I mean, I don’t even do any advertising and I get calls all week long. I have to monitor my schedule so that me and my team aren’t overbooked with these calls, but it will come to you, but it is that mindset shift, because nobody else is going to buy your course, hire you, do anything if you don’t truly believe that you can bring something positive to them and get them big results.
Chris Badgett: That’s fantastic. I’ve been in this industry for a long time, especially in Internet years, and I used to not believe in the whole fear of success thing. I understand fear of failure, but there’s some interesting stuff going on there, but I wanted to ask you around mindset. When I see a expert coming on and they’re kind of, they’re getting to really go online and try to go big. Inevitably, they start sabotaging something or something is not right, and the launch just stretches out into the future of the website or the coaching program, or the marketing campaign or whatever. I think there is some fear of being judged and really going on stage in a big way. I mean, the Internet is a big place. What kind of mindset stuff is operating that’s keeping people blocked or making them kind of almost subconsciously delay the launch of the program?
Elizabeth P.: I think they think people are paying attention way more than they are. So this is something that I always used to tell myself before I had to go speak on a large stage. At Coca-Cola once I gave a presentation in front of like 2,000 people, and I’m just a 26-year-old freaking out, right?
Chris Badgett: Yeah.
Elizabeth P.: And then somebody told me, “You know they’re not paying attention to you. They’re on their phones or whatever.” But nobody is rooting for you to fail, they really aren’t and that was something that really stuck with me. When I first started making video content for my website and sending it off to all five people or whoever that were watching it, it was very scary, and when I was on TV last weekend, I was freaking out, like, “Oh my god, I’m on live TV.” But then I’m thinking, the people that are watching TV are doing other stuff, and the people who are watching, they’re not waiting for you to stumble on that one word. So just take a little bit of pressure off yourself. That course, they’re not going to notice if you’re recording a webinar and you slip up a little. A lot of times it actually makes you more relatable, and when you’re authentic, people really gravitate towards that.
Elizabeth P.: So the only person you’re hurting by kicking the can down the road, and I have done this. I get it, I’ve done it, I’ve done it with book proposals, I’ve done it with everything, but at the end of the day, the only thing that is going to take that weight of your back and that sinking feeling like you’re putting something off is obviously action, right? Just do a little bit, even if you set your phone for 20 minutes. Today I’m going to work 20 minutes on the course, then I’ll meet with my clients or I’ll do whatever. A lot of time once you start kind of getting in the flow, you can knock out way more of whatever project you have for yourself if you really do just let yourself off the hook after a certain amount of time and realize that if you do mess up, it’s probably only going to season it up a little bit and add a little bit more authenticity to whatever you’re producing, so you just have to do it.
Chris Badgett: Awesome. You should go check out Elizabeth Pearson’s YouTube channel because one of the things I notice about your videos is they’re very specific and there’s no fluff, and you walk away with a solution to whatever problem. I watched one about guilt around being a parent, and work, and how to deal with that. I was like, “Wow, that’s really good.” I was taking some notes. Maybe I’m going to [inaudible 00:15:07].
Elizabeth P.: Good.
Chris Badgett: Time I go to a conference or whatever, but.
Elizabeth P.: Yeah, the videos are kind of like all of these wonderful books in my office, I tear through books. I love them, I’m sure you’re a ferocious reader as well, and courses, I mean, I’ll take whatever, but what I like to do is just boil it down to a really short actionable video because so many times when I was traveling for work, I would just be waiting for my flight to board, and I would just look through what is a good 10 minute video I can watch, whether it be Oprah, or Tony Robbins, or Eckhart Tolle, or you name it, and I would try to get some learning that day. So I like my videos to be these little nuggets, even if you have just one a week. Hopefully you can take something from it and apply it to your daily life that week specifically and learn something, right? I think we have to just really condense, or like the CliffsNotes of all of these spiritual books and all these business books that I’ve read.
Chris Badgett: So I’m going to give you another example and another reason to go to Elizabeth’s YouTube channel which is, she had one about negotiating salary, and it’s from a book, a guy Christopher Voss, he wrote a book called Never Split the Difference. I listened to a two hour podcast with Tim Ferriss with the author, I’ve also read the book, and then I watched your six minute video and I was like, “You know what? That’s all I really, I could.”
Elizabeth P.: Yes.
Chris Badgett: It’s the CliffsNotes to the CliffsNotes.
Elizabeth P.: Oh my gosh, that’s the biggest compliment ever. I know, I try to just think, because I’ll read them, and then I think, “What do I remember? What stuck with me throughout it and then that’s what I’ll do the video on.”
Chris Badgett: Yeah, what’s actionable. You’re very action. You’re giving people tools, not just ideas, like, “Say this, use this.”
Elizabeth P.: Yes. Do this, because that’s what I needed. A lot of times, well the books will have them in there, but a lot of times it’s buried. So sometimes, like the book I’m writing is going to be super small, you can plow through it in two nights on your nightstand. People are, they’re too busy, right? I don’t need plowing through these books to be another thing to do, but it’s my jam. I love reading this stuff, as I’m sure you do as well and a lot of your listeners probably love getting this knowledge, but at the end of the day, tell me what to do. Dan Lok says he reads books and he’ll read maybe the first three chapters, he’ll get one nugget out of it and then he puts it to the side. He doesn’t even, he’s like, “I got my thing, now I’m going to move onto the next one.” Because he knows a lot of times these books, I don’t want to say it’s filler, all of it’s great content, but if you’re in a hurry and you need something actionable, it could take people a month if they’re reading a few lines the night before they fall asleep because they’re exhausted. So yeah, I think I kind of boil it down for people.
Chris Badgett: You have another video titled Break Free From the Cage of Mediocrity. What is it about, how do you help people get through mediocrity and what’s the problem there and what’s on the other side of breaking through?
Elizabeth P.: I think the first step is to get people to admit that there’s some area in their life where they’ve accepted mediocrity as the new bar, right? So a lot of people that call me, they say, “Well, I’m not unhappy.” And I’m like, “Wow, that’s a pretty low bar.” So we’re just, we’re not miserable yet. We’re on our way there, but somewhere along the line we’ve lowered our standards. So it could be physical health, it could be relationships, it could be your job, which is what encounter most of the time, but usually the other three are kind of hidden back there too. It could be the amount of time that you spend with your kids, right? It could be a lot of things where we’ve said, “Okay, we’re just going to accept how it is.” And that is really dangerous, Chris, because once you start feeling a little bit powerless or apathetic towards a situation in your life, it’s a slippery slope from mediocrity to misery.
Elizabeth P.: So the first step is acknowledging that you’re putting up with something that your 22-year-old self who was wanting to go out there and take on the world and be rich, and have all of these stuff, that now you are kind of hiding behind the safety of your corporate job, and I’m not hating on corporate jobs, I learned so much and I have so many mentors from those experiences, but at the end of the day, a lot of people think that that’s safe, right? So we’re looking for safety instead of this wonderful spontaneity of living life, and that a lot of times involves people taking risks, which they don’t like doing. So I just get them to kind of wake up. I will say it back to them. They’ll tell me what their situation is and I say, “Okay, wow. So you’re traveling. You’re missing your kids growing up, you don’t have time to do yoga anymore, you don’t have time to do this and all that stuff.” And once you frame it up for them, they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I am.” But then the beauty of acknowledging that is that you get to take back control of what the rest of your story looks like. It doesn’t have to be one of mediocrity and just getting through the day.
Chris Badgett: That was awesome. I feel like I’m getting a free coaching session. Thank you.
Elizabeth P.: Yeah. You are, everybody is, yay.
Chris Badgett: I wanted to get into your story a little bit. It was a process. You didn’t quit your day job. Just to frame in the timeline. How long from when you had the idea that I’m going to do some coaching on the side or whatever? How long did it take from that idea to doing both, to quitting, to how far out are we now? Can you context us with time?
Elizabeth P.: Yeah. Well, the catalyst was the birth of my daughter Delilah, so that was almost seven years ago. I just, I sort of started questioning everything, as most first-time parents do, right? What is my purpose? What am I here for? And after that I started really becoming a seeker. So I went to yoga retreats, I went to all of these meditations, sound bath healings, all these wonderful things, started reading all these books, and then once I started tapping into my spirituality, I realized that the priorities that I had for myself, which were making rich people richer and selling stuff, stuff that I loved, great brands, and everybody. I can’t say enough good things about my past employers. Being on the vitaminwater core team, you know what I mean? It was a great ride and they took care of us, but at the end of the day, everybody who’s listening or watching this, I had a burning that I was wanted to be boss. I didn’t want to be a Beyoncé backup dancer. I wanted to be Beyoncé. So what am I going to do here? Am I just going to keep doing what I’m doing? So I got with my husband, we sat down with our financial planner and we had a five year plan to save money for me to start my own thing, I had no idea what that was.
Elizabeth P.: So I think that’s important. You have to have some sort of financial support, some sort of stability. This doesn’t mean that my husband makes all the money, it’s not. We were equal breadwinners, so it was a big deal for me to walk away from my job, but we were aligned that the plan was within five years, I was going to bounce. So we started saving, we started doubling up 401(k) contributions, stocking money away, having some liquid assets, and then once we moved to California, which was a total manifestation, I take everything as a sign, right? We got here and then I started realizing that I’m going to the East Coast every week for work. I’m calling on CVS in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and then I’m flying back here in red-eyes, and then my husband is going, and at some point it was like, “This isn’t working. I can’t do this. I can’t be away from my kids like this.”
Elizabeth P.: So it was one of those moments of like, what are we waiting for? The time is now. I had a couple of clients that I was doing on the weekend, but by no means was this a significant stream of income. This was me getting certified and kind of getting a few of those first-time clients under my belt, and then we just looked at each other one day and I said, “I think we’re ready, and it was January.” So it was a great time to kind of start, and I lovingly said goodbye to my sales job, and I started the first six months, which felt like soul-crushing work of building a website and I just started doing these videos, and little by little, overcoming resistance every day, because I still get hit with resistance every single day, it started to take shape, but it took at least six months for that to start.
Elizabeth P.: I know there are a lot of courses and things out there that will say, “You can be making seven figures in four months.” And all this stuff, and those were the kind of courses I bought into, and they were great, I learned a lot from them, but I started to feel like a failure when I wasn’t at seven figures in four months, which is insane, right? To think of that, but a lot of people this is what they’re trying to sell you. So my word of advice to you is know this is not an overnight thing, this was a long five year plan to get two years of income built up, and assuming I would have to spend six figures within those two years, investing it in myself in order to make this happen, and I’m not saying you have to have that, but you do have to have a plan. It’s really irresponsible to just say, “I’m being mediocre, and I don’t want to do my job anymore.” And then quit and think that you’re going to start an online business and you’re going to be making six figures within the first year by yourself.
Elizabeth P.: You will have to invest in coaches, a business mentorship, advertising, all of these stuff, but you can absolutely do it. I mean, soup to nuts as far as like if we don’t look at the five years of saving and planning, two years in, I’m doing really good, and it’s just, it’s growing and I’m not advertising and I have a wait list, but the main thing I focused on was over delivering for clients, a 100%, and I feel like that is an intention, that is a vibration that you’re on, and your tribe will come and they will happily give you money to get them out of this kind of hell that they’re in. Have them living a best life, you know?
Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. I just want to confirm. A similar thing happened to me when I became an entrepreneur later in life, and I started hearing like, “Oh, it takes you three years to replace your income or whatever on average.” And it took me five, and I was like, it made me feel like oh, it made me feel a little bad. So you just have to be careful about your judging yourself based on some formula you heard on a show somewhere. That stuff can I guess seek into your mindset, sink in.
Elizabeth P.: It can, and then you start questioning. Should I even be doing this?
Chris Badgett: Yeah.
Elizabeth P.: I mean, so many days I was weeping to my husband, literally in the corner of my office one day, rocking on the floor and I said, “I made a huge mistake.” Because it’s not like I had some minimum wage job, I had an amazing career that I worked very hard to get where I was, and I left it to do something totally different, and at that time, I didn’t see how those skills were transferable. So I just thought, “Oh my god.” I had spent 15 years and countless trips and sacrificing, going back from maternity leave early to make buyer meetings at Target, all of these stuff, and now it’s just poof, it’s gone, and now I can’t even pull in a couple 1,000 dollars a month, right?
Elizabeth P.: It was hard, and I think that that is something that a lot of times people can gloss over, or it gets glamorized as the hustle, and keep going, and that’s great and all, but you do need to be really realistic because I think when you’re expecting to hit resistance and you’re expecting to kind of have this length of time, you can better adapt to it, right? And then you can keep going, but when you think it only takes a year, or two years, or something like that to completely pull a 180 and then be making that, I mean, you’re really lucky. It’s not impossible, but it’s going to be very hard, and this can be very hard if you don’t invest in yourself, that’s the number one thing. I’m not saying just start doling out money on courses, and coaches and all that stuff. Don’t do that, be really smart, make sure that you’re getting aligned with somebody who has walked your path so they can show you how to get there, but for me, investing $50,000 in myself in courses, and coaches, it’s really hard, especially when no money was coming in.
Elizabeth P.: So I think that’s the big nugget too, is the solopreneur thing, I get it, I was it for a long time, sometimes it’s where you have to be in the moment, but you have to be willing to push your chips in on yourself.
Chris Badgett: When you’re investing in yourself, I kind of learned that maybe you can relate as a parent, you have to have that support network, right? That helps that’s more than just you and your spouse, you need some help, and friends and whatever, family, whatever, babysitters, community.
Elizabeth P.: Yeah.
Chris Badgett: Support network makes the difference between no time or whatever and I have a life. You’ve mentioned investing $50,000 in courses and coaching or whatever. What are some specifics or what types of things when you were investing in yourself, were you studying or getting help on?
Elizabeth P.: Yeah, the first one was just, it’s funny I don’t even use it right now, I probably shouldn’t say this. I had to build a marketing funnel, stuff like that. Everybody’s heard about a sales funnel.
Chris Badgett: Yeah.
Elizabeth P.: I took a whole course aimed at coaching, right? How to get your coaching business to the next level, right? Sales and very generic, but it was a 16 course module and a lot of it was around building your sales funnel, and to me, and I know that they work. I know that they work for a lot of people. For me, I did it kind of half-assed and I felt like I connected more with people talking to them in a breakthrough call or via my videos, and so I didn’t love that. I’m not saying I would never use it, but that was where I dropped 10 grand on a program to build a sales funnel, and I think it depends on what kind of service you’re offering. I know those can be incredibly effective, I’m not going to advise anybody to not do it, but in hindsight, the things that I took away from that were just more of the tech things, right? How do I make sure that my website has great SEO? Should I be using Ontraport for my emails, should I? It was more about building an email list and things like that, so and using … I use Acuity for my scheduling, all of my calls, things like that.
Elizabeth P.: So I took nuggets from that more so on which service providers to use. I’m sure they’re all great, but the other thing that that did for me is it pushed me, right? Because I had to get these modules done. I only had four months and then my program was expiring. So it made me sit at this desk every day and for 12 hours, I mean, I was writing code on my website and I has never done that, right? My husband comes up and it’s like out of a movie. The black screen and I’m copying and pasting code in there and he’s like, “Oh my god, what are you doing?” I’m like, “I’m learning code.” And then I had to, I invested in Filmora which was a great video software platform so that when I make my videos I can easily go in there and put text, applications over them, but I made myself learn everything before I started outsourcing. So that’s where the payoff came from investing in things like that, where a lot of these other people had done them before, or they had done Facebook Ads. So another big chunk of this $10,000 program that I did was how to make a Facebook ad.
Elizabeth P.: Again, right now I’m not doing it because honestly, I got to put the brakes on a little bit, but I think once we’re ready to start going for more we’ll probably pull in some Facebook ads, but there are all sorts of people out there to help you do that kind of stuff, but at the end of the day, if I could back and do it again I probably just would’ve tried to find a one-on-one coaching mentor who knew how to do that stuff because I still felt alone in those courses a lot of times, because there were hundreds of other members, and it was me watching a video and then doing the module. There was not a lot of one-on-one interaction. Nobody could look at my website and kind of proof it for me or give me any feedback. So I had to just do a lot of trial and error.
Elizabeth P.: So if people are out there looking to invest, if you can swing it, I would say hire a business coach, a one-on-one business mentor. Somebody whose website looks tight, somebody who is getting press, somebody who’s got a lot of credibility, and then invest in them because they’ve done it. I was just kind of buying into a module, right? Which was great. I know I’ve created online courses and they’re really impactful, but if you are trying to get in the left hand lane and kind of go fast and expedite the process, one-on-one I feel like is the best.
Chris Badgett: What was the hardest part of making the transition from your job? I mean, you had skills, I’m sure you were a great communicator and everything, but what surprised you or what was the biggest bump or hurdle you had to get though getting your business launched?
Elizabeth P.: The loneliness.
Chris Badgett: Yeah.
Elizabeth P.: I mean, for me, if I’m being totally honest I was, I already worked remote, but I loved the status that I had of walking through the airport with my Starbucks and my pencil skirt and going to first class. That was something that my ego was feeding on, and I didn’t really understand the depths of that until I was doing, what do they say? The laptop lifestyle or whatever. I was in this room most of the time in yoga pants and I’m working, I’m on the phone all day long with potential clients, and I’m building the website, and I’m making the videos every once in a while, but it was really lonely, and at the end of the day, I felt like, and then my husband traveled.
Elizabeth P.: So really the only people I’m hanging out with are a seven-year-old and a four year, four and six actually. My two little girls and they’re looking at me and I’ve been crying half the day. I don’t think I was prepared for that. I thought since I worked remote most of the time anyway for work, it wouldn’t be that big of a transition, but just the touchstone of having somebody that is going through the same things you are, you know? And I tell people to watch out for the well-meaning family and friends. I say well-meaning because during this time when I’m calling my mom crying and stuff it’s like, “We’re really concerned. Are you sure you just can’t go get your job back?” Like literally, and then a good 90% of my girlfriends fell of the face of the Earth. They were there for me, they wanted to take me to wine when I was down-and-out and crying, but then when the business started to take off, it got weird for them.
Chris Badgett: Why?
Elizabeth P.: I feel like sometimes, Chris, when you totally change your life, it can shine a light on other people that have those same dreams but they gave up on them a long time ago, and it can be uncomfortable. I started downplaying stuff. I would not mention stuff. I wouldn’t mention that I had a TV spot. I wouldn’t mention this or that. I wouldn’t mention that we had a record month. I would really downplay my success because I didn’t want to come off as braggy, or boastful, or whatever, but I was just happy, I was excited. So it was really lonely. I was alone during the day and then a lot of my friends disappeared. So I would say that was something I wish somebody would’ve prepared me for to your point so that you can build up your support network of your ride or dies, beforehand, right? And I’ve got a few of those, but then we moved, so they were all in Chicago.
Elizabeth P.: So it was still like, but at the end of the day, I figured out that I depend on myself, right? And I’ve got a great team, and things are different but you will get through it. It’s kind of like the hero’s journey. You just have to be prepared to be in that kind of dark forest for a while or hire somebody to kind of guide you through it, but you should get a coach. Anybody who’s an entrepreneur should have some sort of coach. I don’t care if it’s mindset, business, success, whatever. Find somebody who knows what you’re going through so they can keep you going.
Chris Badgett: That’s really good. I have a business partner, but I haven’t always had a business partner in my entrepreneurial journey and there was a time when I went to a 20 person mastermind, it was a little bit of a stretch financially, it was a fly to another country thing, and it was so powerful. I’ve since been, it happens once a year. It’s a retreat kind of format but I’ve since been back five times, but that pivotal move of finding your tribe, and like you perhaps, I can run in lots of different tribes, and sometimes I discover a whole new tribe, like oh wow, these are my people over here too, and entrepreneurs need other entrepreneurs. I think it’s a really important part of mental health and just dealing with that loneliness that comes with creating something out of nothing.
Elizabeth P.: 100%. The entrepreneurs, I told my husband, I said, because I was hanging out with a few women that I meet here or there, and they’re talking about Target runs and things like that and I’m like, “I’ve got to.” You know what I mean? “I’ve got to [inaudible] launch this.” I’m thinking to myself, and it’s no judgment, it really isn’t, it’s just completely different scenarios, right? It was like I had nothing in common with people who weren’t entrepreneurs, and I still struggle with that. I still am trying to build that tribe, but to your point, a 100%. If you can get with people who are in a similar boat as you or have been, you can really, and they’re so willing to help, right? Because anybody who’s been through it, all they want to do is try to support somebody else who’s going through it. So that’s so critical, but I don’t think people talk about that enough about the loneliness and about the self-doubt. That pops up a lot. Everybody’s trying to just fake it till they make it and be cool, and not sweat it, and not let other people see you stressed, but I think that it’s kind of like parenthood, right, too.
Elizabeth P.: It’s like nobody wants to say that they had a really hard day. They don’t want to admit it, but at the end of the day, that’s the only way you can get help and that’s the only way I feel like the universe is going to answer that call and bring people in your life or the opportunity for you to meet those people, as you did with your retreat.
Chris Badgett: Awesome. I wanted to talk to you about your who. You’re serving powerhouse women.
Elizabeth P.: Yes.
Chris Badgett: So as a expert of experience with life experience and skills and everything, we start thinking about like, “Oh, well this is what I know. This is how I can help people.” How did you choose who you were going to help and how did you kind of pick that segment?
Elizabeth P.: It’s kind of embarrassingly simple. It was me. I felt like I could help women who were like me, because again, I feel like, and that’s why I do an application for a call. If we haven’t had similar experiences or you’re not looking to have a similar experience, even if it’s just a spiritual breakthrough, I probably can’t help you, right? So just like you can probably help entrepreneurs the most that kind of had your timeline or your path, right? So for me, it was this overworked spiritual seeker woman who knows that she’s kind of in this trans of mediocrity, but doesn’t know how to bust out and feels trapped. So for a long time I felt really stuck. I felt like I had come so far down this road, right? I built this career. So I can’t turn around now. I can’t leave this, but I always tell these women on these calls I say, “If you’re going down a road and you figure out it’s a one-way and you’re going the wrong way, do you keep going or do you turn around and go a different way?” And so many of them feel like they’ve invested so much that they no longer have options. They can’t make a change, and it’s total bull, but you have to have the courage to do it.
Elizabeth P.: So I think that that was what I knew I wanted to help with my audience, and from there it’s kind of blossomed. I mean, a lot of millennials are actually reaching out because they feel stuck, and they’re 25 and they feel stuck, but god bless them, they’re acknowledging it so much earlier, right? I feel like with us it was this duty, this obligation to just whatever your master’s was in or whatever you had a degree in, well, you chose that when you were 19 and you’re stuck with it. Tough shit, you’re in it. This is it, this is your life, and these people are like, “You know what?” I think they’re a little bit more woke, whatever you say, and so they’re like, “I’m 25 and I don’t like this. I need to fully eject. Let’s go a different direction.” I’m like, “Right on. You can do it and I’ll show you how.”
Elizabeth P.: So it is powerhouse women, mostly moms, but now it’s this wonderful subset of millennials who are really writing their story. They’re taking control of their life and they’re realizing that they have options much earlier.
Chris Badgett: One of my favorite words is integrated, integrate. You mentioned someone being a spiritual seeker. As a entrepreneur, there’s all these business stuff going on, but if you neglect your health and don’t maintain your energy, it has a dramatic impact. Or you can improve your business output with health stuff a lot, and you don’t want to do either of those at the expense of your relationships, otherwise what are we doing this for? How are we supported? But then you’re weaving in a spiritual component, and there’s this idea of energetic blocks and stuff like that. Can you lay some spiritual key on us?
Elizabeth P.: Yeah.
Chris Badgett: Of what’s going on and what happens there?
Elizabeth P.: Well, I can highly recommend, I mean, you mentioned I’ve got some videos, but any videos that you can find with Esther Hicks, who is this wonderful medium for this Angel Abraham Hicks. I know it sounds a little far out there but just Google it, try it out, it’s good stuff. It’s really about everything in our life in a physical manifestation of a vibration that we had in the past, right? So one of the first things I say to people is everything that you have around you, this situation that you’re in right now is because this is what you believe you deserve, right? This is what you believe you’re worth. So if you are in a dead-end job, or you are struggling, it’s because you believe that this is as good as it can get for you.
Elizabeth P.: So once you kind of say, “Okay, maybe I believe that a little bit.” Then we can start unpacking why. So a lot of reasons people have blocks, whether it’s money mindset blocks, relationship block, success blocks, all of this is because we’ve told ourselves a story so many times. Maybe we thought it was what we were seeing in reality, but Esther talks about a belief being a thought you keep thinking. So if you keep thinking, “God, this is going to be a really hard. I mean, this is going to be really hard for a year. I’m going to make no money.” The universe says, it’s the genie in Aladdin, right? “Your wish is granted.” You will continue to struggle. You will be in this mindset of lack and therefore really take longer than normal, probably you have to claw your way to make any sort of money, but if you believe, if you start telling yourself, even if you don’t believe it at first, you don’t think it’s reality. You know what? I’m going to be incredibly successful, and I’m at peace with whatever timeline the universe wants me to work on, right?
Elizabeth P.: For a long time I was like, “I really want some press. I’m doing all these stuff, I’m making these videos, nobody is watching them.” All that stuff. “I just need to get on TV.” And I just was really adamant about it for a long time, and the second I said, “You know what? Screw them. If somebody doesn’t want to have me on, then that’s fine. I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing, and my peeps are watching and that’s what’s important.” It was like boom, literally two days later I’m on TV in LA. So I think if you are in a place of surrender and acceptance to the timeline it’s going to take you to grow your business, you will let that abundance flow to you much more freely than telling yourself over and over again, “This is going to be hard.” Or, “My kids aren’t going to like this.” Or, “I don’t know. I’m going to have to reevaluate.” A lot of people do this. I’m going to have to reevaluate in six months to a year. If it isn’t working, then I’ll just go back, right? We already have made an exit plan for ourselves. Well, then you’re really just buying time till the end of the year, till you can get out, and that’s your excuse.
Elizabeth P.: So I tell people, “Just start telling yourself things that even feel like lies.” Right? I’m going to make eight figures in my first 10 years, whatever this big goal is. A goal so big that it makes you really kind of uncomfortable and you don’t really want to tell anybody about it, start telling yourself that. I tell people too like, “Change your password.” Something in your phone or something, whether it’s eight figures, or crazy money, or whatever, so you’re just you’re typing it in all day long, right? You have notes up. I have notes up all over the place that say, “It’s on its way.” I don’t know what it is, but whatever it is, it’s on its way to me. It’s already mine. Somebody else can’t take it from me. It’s predestined for me. So if you start kind of just telling yourself things, even if they feel like lies, eventually you will believe it, and then once you really believe it, you can kind of sit in this place of surrender and ease, and then it shows up for you.
Chris Badgett: I’m right there with you. I’ve had some things happen in life where I was just thinking about the ideal, and just kind of obsessing over it, and just being open to it, and then kind of waking up inside that reality a year later or whatever. It does happen.
Elizabeth P.: It totally does. You just have to, once you surrender, which is really hard for especially entrepreneurs, and we want to try to plan and control, and have a timeline, and then hit goals. And goals are great, you should have a plan, a 100%, but I tell clients all the time, a lot of times like, “Well, I was writing down my goals.” And I’m like, “Well, that’s good, but maybe you can even phrase it as wouldn’t it be great if? Or wouldn’t it be nice if I made seven figures this year? Wouldn’t it be nice if I had 200 people buy this course in the first day I launched it. Wouldn’t it be nice if? Because you see that shift. It’s just less pressure. It’s like a lighter, more positive head space than I have to do this and if I don’t do this, because when you do that, you’re focusing on the lack of its presence right now, which really just breeds more of that situation. So try not to take it so seriously. I know there is money on the line for people, but if you really are focused on the product that you’re giving, the money will come.
Chris Badgett: I’m kind of smiling because you reminded me, I told, sometimes I tell my daughters things like, a piece of advice like, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” I forget who said that, and I was at a playground and I laughed out loud when I saw my daughter telling some other kid trying to climb something like, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” [inaudible 00:47:06].
Elizabeth P.: Oh my god, that’s amazing. That’s how you know you’re crushing it is a parent, when they start repeating like that. Delilah says all the time, she goes, “Just surrender.” Because she hears me telling my husband that all the time when they’re throwing a tantrum, I’m like, “The more you resist the more it persists. Surrender, just let them work it out and then we’ll deal with it later.” But to your point, trying to force something or force yourself, or force people to sign up for something. That was the other thing, I thought, “I can get people to buy this whatever.” No, I can’t. I have no control over who’s going to buy this course, over what clients are going to come to me. The only thing that I can do is put out really great content and trust that the people who resonate in my reality are there for a reason, good or bad, whatever you want to label it, but you can’t force this timeline. If you’re an entrepreneur, you really can’t. You can work hard and be persistent, but once you realize you have no control, it’s almost like this wonderful sense of calm, because it’s not on your shoulders anymore. It’s not the thing on your to-do list. Getting the people to come will happen. There’s nothing you can do to force them into your program.
Chris Badgett: Someone gave me a piece of advice once which stuck with me, that once you’re on the train, you still don’t have to carry the luggage.
Elizabeth P.: That’s really good.
Chris Badgett: I want to ask you about your group program. If there’s a coach out there listening or a course creator and they’re thinking of doing a group program for their site, you have a 16 week program on a lot of awesome topics. How did you design that, how did you come up with those 16 things or what we’re going to do one week after the next?
Elizabeth P.: It is really simple. It’s what I do with my one-on-one clients. So the first few that I had, it’s always been a four month program. I don’t like to go much longer than that because I want people to get results quickly. I’m not a crutch, we are going to move the train quickly and then that’s it, and you’re on your own. But this, it was just I was sending them this customized growth work. I’d have a session with them and then I’d say, “I’m going to send you growth work to work on in between our next session in two weeks.” So a lot of this was from emails. I found myself typing the same email. A lot of the same things, they were a little bit different for each woman, but at the same time it was very similar. So I just started taking note, and I just started copying and pasting it into a little Word doc, and then all of a sudden I realize I’ve got like 40 Word docs with all these different growth work for them, but they were all along the same timeline. They were very sequential. No matter who I was working with, it was really the same gist, right? You have to do this first and then we’ll work our way down.
Elizabeth P.: So I thought, once I started getting a little bit overwhelmed, right? To the point where again, I’m not taking care of myself now because I’ve got back-to-back client calls all day long. But as you know, I loved them. It was like I was, it was I was feeding off of it. I loved these sessions. I didn’t want to give up the one-on-ones, and I still have a few of those, but I also hated getting off the phone with people and telling them they had to wait three months to work with me. So it was like, because when you’re unhappy, and then we’re on the phone, and then we really bring it to light that you’re unhappy, you want to take action. So I felt like the next logical step was to do a group program so that they can start making the changes right now, but then they have this wonderful support network. This is the other thing I was doing. I’d have all these one-on-one clients and I’m like, “Hey, there’s eight of you in Minneapolis.” So I would put them together on an email. They’re going to lunches once a month together, all of this great support, right? Which is what we were talking about in the beginning. I had almost felt like I had been neglecting that. They just had me, but then once I introduced them they had me and then they had all of these other fabulous women.
Elizabeth P.: So that’s where the online course really was birthed from, was because there were so many similarities between these women that I was coaching, and I didn’t want others to have to wait, and it’s significantly financially more doable for a lot of people than the one-on-one. The one-on-one, it’s not cheap. It just isn’t at the end of the day, and neither is the online, but at the same time it’s less than half of what the one-on-one was. So I wanted to make it more accessible to a broader base of women.
Chris Badgett: I love it.
Elizabeth P.: But it’s not just women. We actually do have two guys, so I don’t want to scare off the guys.
Chris Badgett: You ended up creating one of the things that where you saw a gap when you were kind of learning, where you were in these courses but you felt by yourself and so on, and now you’re getting these eight people in Minneapolis together to go. That’s social learning, that’s awesome.
Elizabeth P.: There’s nine in Canada, Canadians are totally woke. They’re like [inaudible] stuff, I love it, but yeah, now there are people across the country, but when you’re in this group platform, but then some groups get too big. We have a cap too because I was in one of those like I said, where it was a couple 100 people and you’re on a Zoom and you’re just a pin, you know what I mean? There’s so many people that it’s overwhelming. So it’s like you don’t really connect with them because it’s going to take work, right? This is a small group, so we can all talk and we can all learn from each other’s questions and situations.
Chris Badgett: Yeah, I’ve been to some, like the mastermind thing I was telling you about. 20 to 30 people is a pretty sweet number.
Elizabeth P.: Yeah, it is.
Chris Badgett: You can really get to know everybody, and you go to bigger stuff, you don’t even meet everybody.
Elizabeth P.: No, you don’t, and you don’t feel the need to, because you can play under the radar, and you can slip out, and you can not go to the dinners, or miss a couple of events, and it’s who’s going to notice? So I agree. To your point, you just get people who are super committed and invested in themselves in that group, and then that’s when the magic happens, right?
Chris Badgett: Absolutely. Well, Elizabeth Pearson. She’s at ElizabethPearson.com. Go check her out, go subscribe to her YouTube channel. Any final words for the people and where can they best connect with you online?
Elizabeth P.: Yeah, so they can just go to my website and you can book a call if you want to chat, I love chatting. The other thing that I would say, and it sounds like it’s been said so many times before, but don’t give up. We only have one life. If there’s even a little mouse voice in your head saying, “Be an entrepreneur, do this.” Even though it’s scary, you really owe it to yourself to listen to that, because even if it’s a faint voice, it used to be loud and it just got drowned out year, after year, after year, when you did what you should do. What you should do, what’s best for your family and everybody around you is for you to follow your dream, whatever that looks like and never, ever, ever give up on it.
Chris Badgett: Awesome, Elizabeth. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it.
Elizabeth P.: Thank you, Chris.
Chris Badgett: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMScast. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I hope you enjoyed the show. This show was brought to you by LifterLMS, the number one tool for creating, selling, and protecting engaging online courses to help you get more revenue, freedom, and impact in your life. Head on over to LifterLMS.com and get the best gear for your course creator journey. Let’s build the most engaging results getting courses on the Internet.
