Start doing things in business YOUR way
Tune in to the episode: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY | STITCHER
Well, here we are at the very first episode of the Brand Spanking You podcast. So I thought it would be great to give you a little overview of what you can expect from this little ol’ show.
As a lifelong creative- who’s created work for some of the world’s biggest brands + became an entrepreneur herself- I’ve discovered that the entrepreneurial journey isn’t that different than the creative process itself (no surprises there probably!)
To be successful in business, and to put yourself out there online, you’re going to have to dig deep into your mindset. And in the process, you may find out that starting a business becomes the biggest personal growth project you’ll ever take on.
It’s a messy journey, but one you won’t want to trade in. Because in the process of building your online business, you’ll discover things about yourself you never knew, and find out that you’re capable of incredible things.
If you’ve ever struggled with figuring out how to brand yourself, or got confused by the mountains and mountains of information, online courses, and programs out there, you are not alone.
With new solo and guest interview episodes coming out weekly, we’re going to wade through all of it and discover how you can build a brand and business YOUR way. In a way that aligns with your bigger purpose, values, and mission.
Listen to the episode below:
This episode discusses topics like…
My background, and how I started recognizing that building a successful business wasn’t just about following the right strategies, tactics, and rules.
What to expect in the weeks and months ahead as you tune in to the Brand Spanking You podcast.
The series of major life events that really kick-started my personal growth journey
How I tap into the feelings, emotions, and learnings from moments in my life that up-leveled me and apply them to my business.
Why learning to do things “your way” in business is really the only way to create an aligned, sustainable business.
Links from the episode:
Follow me (Sarah Ehlinger) on Instagram for honest conversations about business, mindset, and my life.
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Thank you SO much for being here, friend. See you in the next episode!
xoxo
Sarah
Episode transcription
Hey, how's it going? We're here we are here. Episode one of the brand spanking you. So, what are we going to do today? I think today we're just going to chat. We're going to have a quick little chat about what this podcast is even all about and why you may even want to listen. I don't know. Maybe you won't want to listen after you hear what I have to say.
Hopefully that's not the case, but I think you will want to listen. So first of all, who the heck am I? I am Sarah. Hello, hi. To meet you. Uh, I'm Sarah Ellinger. I have been in the design marketing product development brand strategy space for about 20 years now. That really makes me sound old, but you know, these are the facts I've been doing this for about 20 years.
About 12 years ago, I started my own, I went off and became a freelancer solopreneur. Um, and in that time there's been a lot of different iterations of my business. I'm going to go into that in detail in next week episode, where I tell you a little bit about my entrepreneurial journey, but the long story short is, I have been at this for a minute or two. I've been at it for a minute or two. Both working as a full-time employee at an agency working as a contract employee for agencies with corporate clients and working for myself, um, both doing service based things. Service-based clients, coaching digital products.
So. That's me. That's a little bit about what I'm all about now. Let's talk about what this show is all about. So this show is my current creative project in my business. And what I mean by that is I have come to discover that when it comes to business, first of all, business starting your own business really is one gigantic creative project that actually doesn't really have an end point. I mean, unless you like shut it down, but otherwise, if you just keep at it, it's just like this huge creative project with all of these twists and turns. And then within that, there's all these like little separate little creative projects.
And I used to think that there was this, like, you could measure it. You either. Succeeded or you failed at something or you won or you lost, you know, it's like very binary, um, which, you know, is the world we live in. But as I started reflecting on my business and certainly as it related to the way that I had been growing personally in my personal life, I started realizing that.
That's not the truth. And in fact, when you embrace what the truth actually is that it's just one big, giant experiment and it's just collecting data over and over and over, and then tweaking and pivoting and changing and refining. And like that's all it is over and over and over. There is no like, oh, sweet, done. Success. Over. Because like the minute you get to something, then you're going to keep refining and keep going. After that, you know, I started to think about that as it related to my personal life, because in my personal life, I went through a series of, I kinda, I had a, uh, a period of time in my life about 12 or 13 years ago where I had many massive things happen to me all within a year and a half period.
I went through a divorce. I got laid off from my job. I experienced the death of someone very close to me. I moved across the country. I left all my friends and family moved across the country. I met and fell in love with someone else. My current partner right now, this all, it was like all of these like massive life-changing things were condensed into about a year and a half.
And that exploded my personal growth journey because I had no choice, but to just really focus on myself and my mental and emotional health. And I just went through this whole journey with that, the journey that is continues to this day. And. When I really started diving into my business, the mindset that it takes to be a successful business owner.
I started tapping back into those feelings of when I was going through that huge upheaval in my personal life. And recognizing that at that time, I actually was able to tap into an ability and we all have this. I was able to tap into an ability where instead of getting through, instead of going through that, I was able to grow through it.
I was able to grow through it and become this bigger, bolder, better version of myself. And like I said, that continues to this day. And now I can tap back into like literally what it felt like to be leveling up like that, to be changing my mindset, to be creating new neural pathways, but there's physical feelings or like emotions that like my body can remember.
And when I take that and I apply that to some of the same challenges I'm going through in my business. It's just massively helpful to me. And so that's why this podcast is called brand spanking you, because certainly it is about business and branding and marketing, and we're going to get into all of that.
But. There's also this notion that if you approach business like this creative, personal growth project, not only are you going to be more successful in business, but you're also going to just grow yourself beyond your wildest imagination. So that is kind of a long summary of some of the things you can expect me to explore while on this journey for this podcast.
And sometimes, you know, that'll mean me sharing things in real time. Like I'd love to have this be a space where I'm actually sharing the things I'm working like new initiatives or new projects I'm working on my business and how I'm approaching them. How I'm thinking about them differently than maybe the status quo. How I'm tweaking and taking things and yes, using some tried and true strategies, but also looking at them in a way that worked for me. So something that I got into several years back was human design and I hope to have several, I don't want to just have one. I want to have several different human design experts on here.
I want to talk about human design because I just love it so much. And I think it's a super helpful modality, but one of the things that I really love about it, and that really unlocked a lot for me is that we don't all have to do everything the same way and based on our design, based on our type. And it's like, you know, we all are a special snowflake.
We all have our own fingerprint, our own signature and human design really let's you experiment and dive into that. And especially when it comes to business, you can start to think about things in a way where, you know, something that works really well for me may not work at all for you and vice versa.
And trust me, when I say that I have invested tens of thousands of dollars into- probably more at this point- into courses programs, coaching, you know, like all of the things. And for a long time, I was really spinning my wheels with all of that. And I was running around like looking for that magic bullet, that thing, that system, or that strategy, or that process that was really going to unlock things for me.
And it wasn't until I got to the point where I started embracing that I got to do things my own way. That things started to make sense. And now I don't mean that, you know, there are some tried and true strategies out there that work, and I don't mean you should just, you know, throw all those out and completely reinvent the wheel, but it does mean that, you know, you can go back and revisit some of those courses or programs or show up to sessions with your coach, understanding that this is all advice. These are all strategies. These are all things that work, but you get to use them in a way that works for you. Not the other way around, like you don't want to become a victim to the strategy where suddenly you're, you know, using some strategy to have Instagram reels be the thing that builds your business and your fucking hate doing reels. Like that's not sustainable. That's not going to work for you in the long run. Now you could look at that, like maybe you get advice, like reels works really great for, for building your business. Well, you could look at that and then you could take a step back and be like, okay, here's the tried and true way, I see that it working. How can I do it my way? So that is another thing that we're really going to get into in this show. And hopefully part of how we do that is by me, actually just talking to you about some of the stuff that's going on behind the scenes of my business and how I'm kind of thinking about things through the lens of like both, things that I know, work proven tactics that I know work coupled with things that I also know to be true to me and that worked for me and that are sustainable to me. And hopefully those will be some good examples for you. We'll also be talking to other creatives, other coaches, other solopreneurs and business owners, um, from all different types of businesses about how they are building their businesses, how are they are building their brands, and the expertise that they can bring to you, but mainly talking to them about what it takes from a mindset perspective to be a successful business owner. And by successful, I don't just mean the money. I mean, successful in that it gives you, yes, the money because we're in business, but also the freedom, the peace of mind, the emotional health, the physical health, like we're doing this because we want all of it.
We're not just doing it to make money. If we were doing it just to make money, some of us would actually be better served to stop and go get a regular nine to five. Right. So it's about all these things that I want to be talking to. People that have, um, worked through a lot of these issues that are still working through these issues that can maybe give you some insight, um, on how you could be showing up differently, um, in your business in a way that really works for you.
And then yes, of course. We will talk about branding. We will talk about marketing. We will talk about online business. Yes, of course. I love all of these things. I've been in that world for 20 years. Plus, you know, I love learning about the online business space. I think the online business space affords us such amazing opportunity, that were not available even, you know, 10 years ago. So I love learning about it, I love seeing how it's changing. I love the, the opportunities that it presents to everybody, no matter where you live, no matter what age you are, no matter what background you come from. So yes, we are going to talk about those things, but like I said, you know, I'm going to be offering perspectives that aren't just one size fits all approach.
Because we're all unique and our businesses all get to be unique too. And one of the things that I love about that is because we are all unique and because online business makes it so much easier for people of all backgrounds to get into business. I really believe that. People starting their own businesses.
People starting their own online business from all walks of life is one of the things that's going to change the world because. We're going to be getting more perspectives then are going to be having more perspectives and business outside of the white male, CIS gender perspective of how to do business.
Right. And that's a big reason why, even though I love talking about techniques and strategies, I also like talking about them from the perspective of that. They don't have to be cookie cutter. They don't have to look the same from person to person. In fact, they shouldn't, and that's what makes this whole world so exciting and so rich with opportunity.
And then of course we will have some, no surprises here, no surprises here. People, we will have some episodes, actually a lot of episodes probably that are dedicated solely to the mental and mindset, challenges and changes that we all face as solo preneurs entrepreneurs, business owners, because they're there, it doesn't matter what stage of business you're in, whether you are just starting out, pivoting, maybe you still even have a corporate job in your life. You have a side hustle. Maybe you've been at this for a really long time, but you are ready to make a huge pivot and do something different. Or maybe you've been at this for a really long time, but you're like at that next level and you're, you've plateaued and you're like, oh, I actually want to be making more revenue now or actually want to hire people now.
Or I actually want to create more time, freedom for myself. How do I do that? Like, there's all of these mindset and mental challenges that are going to come up over and over and over, no matter what stage of business you're at. So that's definitely something that we're going to explore here and definitely something we're going to explore with the different type of guests that we have on the show too.
And then last but not least, I want you to know that you can expect some ramblings for me. I like to ramble. I like to chat. I like to talk. I like to ramble. And if you already do know anything about human design, I will let you know, and if you don't that's okay, because we'll have some people on here, you can learn about it.
Um, but if you do, I am a manifesting generator. And the big thing with manifesting generators is that we respond. We respond to the world around us and I love to respond. And sometimes that responding comes off as rambling. So. If there is something that I just learned, that I'm really curious about something that I just read or watched, or, you know, quite frankly, something that I see going on in the industry or the world, that's just like really pissing me off or frustrating me.
We're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about it here. All right. So that all sounds like some shit you'd be into. Well, my friend buckle up, buckle up because we're going to get, we're going to go. We're going to do it. And if you're ready for it. Tune in here next week. And let's get this. Let's get this train.
Let's get this train rolling.