Kurt Dupuis:
Welcome to The Whole Truth, where two wholesalers help financial professionals build great practices, and thrive in a rapidly changing industry. We'll bring you the stories and voices from those on the front lines of this change, and we'll have some fun along the way.
Steve Seid:
This is more than a podcast, we're building a community of financial professionals who are growing, forward-thinking, and want to get better. Thanks for listening and contributing to the discussion.
Disclosure:
The views expressed herein are those of the participants and not those of Touchstone Investments.
Steve Seid:
And welcome, everybody, to The Whole Truth from the Bay Area, California. I am Steve Seid.
Kurt Dupuis:
And from Atlanta, Georgia, I'm Kurt Dupuis. I think I blacked out on this episode.
Steve Seid:
Did you? Is that how you would describe it?
Kurt Dupuis:
I remember it just going so phenomenally well and I learned so many things, and then I just woke up and the interview was over.
Steve Seid:
So like a Will Ferrell moment, Old School? We have Elyse Archer on the show. She was awesome. We really had a fun time with her. So a little bit about Elyse. She focuses a lot on personal branding, on accelerating sales, she's a founder of the Brand Builders group, she's a coach, she's a mentor, she's a podcast host. She does a ton on social media. She does daily, what is it?
Kurt Dupuis:
Daily. 8:30 she does live sessions.
Steve Seid:
And the more we dug into what she does, the more we're like, "Wow. There's something really cool here, and just so fun and compelling, and interesting to talk to," and she makes you think, "I'm so analytical and I approach things so differently," and it's this other way of thinking that she's having me doing.
Kurt Dupuis:
She scratched a different nerve, yes.
Steve Seid:
The point is I think the conclusion is we both ended up going down a path we really don't normally go, and we both got a lot out of it.
Kurt Dupuis:
And we didn't know where the conversation would go, but we were convinced that it would go somewhere fruitful, and that's exactly what happened because I think we got through half of our questions, and then we just kind of followed some rabbit holes, which is the best kind of episode, the best kind of conversation. So here's my three big takeaways. So one, I think she's an expert communicating about mindset. So we talked about mindset and energy a lot, and again, as somewhat analytical people, that's not an arena I spend much time with, but I felt myself being gravitated towards the language she was using, towards the way she was thinking about things.
And then the bulk of the episode, we really just kind of unpacked one of her top podcast episodes, which is seven marketing and sales secrets, because that's what she does, she helps people sell, and so we unpacked a lot of those seven tricks, seven ideas that she really focuses on in some of her coaching. And then thirdly, we talked about closing. She talks about selling from a point of scarcity versus abundance. Again, just phraseology that I was not familiar with. She was fantastic though.
Steve Seid:
I think you were ready to sign up for coaching sessions when she left.
Kurt Dupuis:
I still might, I don't know. I'm going to think about it because it was so new and refreshing. It was just a great conversation, and it's why we started this thing. So great conversation, smash the subscribe button if you haven't already, and the holidays are coming up, what better gift you can give someone then putting them on to a new podcast where they interview interesting people like Elyse Archer. So when we come back, we will have our very, very awesome chat with Elyse Archer. Stick with us.
Steve Seid:
So welcome Elyse Archer, to The Whole Truth. We are delighted to have you.
Elyse Archer:
Thank you so much. I am thrilled to be here.
Steve Seid:
When you podcast, you start to talk to other podcasters, and so really excited to have you on because you do a great job with your podcast. It's women-focused, but I want to tell you that guys can learn from it too.
Elyse Archer:
Thank you. Well, and that's the funny thing about focusing your brand on women is actually behind the scenes, most of my private clients are men. It's just how it works out.
Steve Seid:
Is that right? Oh, that's interesting.
Elyse Archer:
Yeah, I know. I've got some group programs that are all women, but I work with a fair number of men behind the scenes too. So the concepts are universal, for sure.
Steve Seid:
Agreed.
Kurt Dupuis:
Elyse is also the second Georgian that we've had on the podcast.
Elyse Archer:
Well, I was. Now I hope I'm not kicked off the show now that I'm no longer in Georgia, but we had just moved three weeks ago. We're up in North Carolina now, but still East Coast.
Kurt Dupuis:
That's it. This is over. Cut the cord.
Steve Seid:
Well, we're happy to have you, and I think the way we'll tackle this is we'll start and just kind of talk through some concepts that we think would be universal to all our audience, men, women regardless, and then towards the end, we'll do some stuff that's focused particularly on women. That work for you?
Elyse Archer:
Love it. Yeah, let's do it.
Steve Seid:
Awesome.
Kurt Dupuis:
I feel like it's always better to have people introduce themselves, particularly just do background and context. So what's your story?
Elyse Archer:
Yeah. Oh, gosh. Well, I'll spare you the two hour long version and I'll just say I was in the sales and even sales coaching space for about 15 years. I got into sales right out of college. This is embarrassing and this dates me but I sold yellow pages as my first sales job. So most people listening probably don't even know what that is now. I was always very driven by the outward success, a lot of pushing to being on the top of the leaderboard, yada-yada, which at the time, I did not realize was because I had a lot of inner-healing work to do. It was very much my ego and wanting to be affirmed by other people.
So I found myself in my early to mid-20s very successful in the sales world, and I think I graduated from Yellow Pages at that point to digital marketing and coaching, and then I'd actually got into sales coaching, working with another organization, but feeling really struggling in a couple areas, one of which I was dealing with a lot of anxiety, "Am I going to be able to keep my clients? Am I going to keep this up?" I was burning the candle at both ends, sleeping three or four hours a night just to get all my workload in, and I also found myself stuck financially although I was making good money and I was what most people would say was a good lifestyle. It was like I couldn't break through past a certain dollar amount every year no matter what I did, and so after being stuck for a long time and going through the frustration that comes along with that, I did an exercise.
I'd hired different coaches throughout the years, and I was doing an exercise with one of my coaches, and it seemed like a very innocent exercise called your Five Dream Lives, and it's something I take my clients through now because it was actually so powerful for me. But basically, it's exactly what it sounds like, you list out what your five dream lives were. Think back to when you were a little kid, things you said you were going to do, and then someone said, "That's silly, you can't make money doing that," or even things now that you maybe think about and say, "In another lifetime maybe, if things were different," and I went through this exercise with her and I looked at these dream lives, and it was things like create a sanctuary that provides healing for animals and people going through addiction issues because there was history of addiction stuff in the family.
Kurt Dupuis:
That's right up Seid's alley.
Elyse Archer:
Is it?
Steve Seid:
I'm an animal rescue guy.
Kurt Dupuis:
Seid's big in the rescue world.
Elyse Archer:
Oh, my gosh. I remember reading that about you. Yeah, it's just a huge part of my heart, and so you get that, you get how compelling that is, things like pay for my husband to go through medical school because that was a dream that he had. He kind of downloaded at that time, and I looked at how much of these dream lives were going to cost, and what I was making at the time wasn't going to cut it. It was like, "You got to have more." I remember there was something about that exercise where I felt compelled afterwards to go online and just look up people who were doing those types of things and look at who they were, and I started looking up the people who were more involved in charitable initiatives like that and had launched, had created that level of success, and I realized there's nothing different about them than me.
A lot of them actually came from more challenging life circumstances and situations, it's just they decided, they gave themselves permission to go for it. And it was at that point, I said, "No one's going to come give me permission to make some big changes here in my life and kind of get out of this rut that I've been in for a while, and actually create the funding that will create the life I want to create," and so I just committed at that point, "I'm going to do whatever I feel called to do to help make these dream lives happen."
And there were a lot of things that weren't convenient about that time. I had a four month old son, but I just felt so compelled and so called to step up and finally make some big things happen, and one of the very strong just intuitive downloads I got was hire this other woman as a coach, this particular woman who helps specifically female entrepreneurs build million dollar businesses because that was the funding that was going to be required to do these things. And at that point, I'd never broke... I'm just going to give numbers for context for this story. I'd never broken, I think, 120 a year in income, and I connect with this woman, talk with her. It's an absolute, "Yes, I need to hire you," and she tells me what it cost to work with her, and it's $50,000 for six months.
And in that moment, I thought, "Well, this is awfully also inconvenient," and there's no way... How am I going to come up with... This doesn't make any sense. This is half of what I made last year to work with this woman. But it continued to be such a visceral, "You have to hire her. She's the one who's going to get you to where you want to go, you have to say yes to this," that through some very convincing talks with my husband and scraping together some credit cards, I put together the money for a down payment to work with her. And in that moment of putting that much of an investment in myself, I had to come face-to-face with everything that had been holding me back up until that point, and I had to come face-to-face with a lot of limiting beliefs around worthiness to even say, "Who am I to invest this much in myself," right? Like, "This is crazy."
Limiting beliefs around money and limiting beliefs around what was possible for me, and I went through about six weeks of hell of dealing with every limiting belief that came up along the way of making that investment, but at the end of six weeks, I had turned my annual income into my monthly income, I had healed so much of the personal anxiety and issues that had been holding me back and I had literally rewired my brain to create this whole new level of success and possibility that's now actually allowing me to fulfill these dream lives, and to serve my clients in doing the same.
Steve Seid:
I want to make sure I heard that correctly. You said you did that in six weeks?
Elyse Archer:
Six weeks, yeah.
Kurt Dupuis:
Hope you gave that coach a bonus. That's a hell of a transformation in six weeks.
Elyse Archer:
I know, right? It is. It's a ton of transformation, and there's a lot from that experience I now implement with my clients to help them create that same level of change because we think it has to take a long time for us to make a quantum leap and it really doesn't when we're willing…
Steve Seid:
Wow.
Elyse Archer:
…to look at things straight in the face and create some real transformation. That's what I'm now passionate about, helping my clients create that same level of transformation in their lives.
Steve Seid:
Yeah. I mean, we're in a professional show here, so I'll use the term guts, but you had a lot of it to make these kinds of calls. To have a little one and to make the call during that time, to have the sales job, where you said, "I wasn't making X amount," but you still were making a good living, specifically your approach. Because I will admit, I don't tend to think the way that you coach people. It's not natural to me. You talk a lot about things like mindset, about energy, those types of things as it relates to sales and creating an authentic self. Why do you spend so much time on those types of things?
Elyse Archer:
So what I've found in years in sales and actually doing a lot of coaching in the financial services space as well is there's these three things that I've seen missing in most sales coaching, and the first one and probably the most important is very little attention to the subconscious programs that are running the show for you, that are creating your results. You can basically think of your brain in two different parts, your conscious mind and your subconscious mind. Now your conscious mind is it's the analytical part, it's the processing part. It's only responsible for 5% of your results though. And so what I saw in a lot of my own sales experience and also in coaching I was delivering as I was part of other companies for years was it was if you want to sell more, say this script, do this thing, follow this process, and that'll get you results with that, and I did and my clients did.
The challenge with that is that you're not addressing 95% of what determines somebody's behavior and outcomes, which is their subconscious programs and subconscious belief systems. So the seat of your mind, the subconscious stores all of your belief systems about what's possible for you, how much money you deserve to make, whether it's safe for you to be visible or not in the world, and what most people don't realize is up until the age of seven, you're basically a giant walking subconscious mind, and what that means is you don't have a filter. You've got a filtering mechanism in your brain, we're going to get kind of technical here, called the reticular activating system, which filters out information and allows you to decide if something is actually true for you or not.
So that's why I could say to you now, "Kurt, you have purple hair," and you would say, "Well, that's funny, but no, I don't," but if you heard that and you're a child and you don't have your conscious mind created yet, you don't have the reticular activating system built in your brain yet, you can't filter it out. Now, that's a silly example. That's not really how it works, but what happens is growing up, most of us hear things we pick up on things, usually from our parents, that become belief systems that run the show for us that aren't usually true and they aren't helpful either.
So for example, let's say that you are growing up, because I deal with money a lot with my clients, you all deal with money all day long, and we don't often stop to think about whether our beliefs about it are true or not. Growing up, let's say you hear your parents arguing about money, which many people did, and maybe you weren't even supposed to overhear the argument, but you hear them arguing about money or you hear them say, "Money doesn't grow on trees," and you don't have the ability at that point to decide whether or not that's actually true or not, you don't have the filtering mechanism yet.
So what happens is because you're a giant walking subconscious, your brain is basically under hypnosis, you take that into be true, and unless you do something later on in life to rewire that belief system, you will be subconsciously running a program that if you hear, "Money doesn't grow on trees. Money's hard to come by, it's scarce," and that's going to make you feel like you have to work really hard to make money, which most people do. Or if you hear your parents arguing about money. A lot of times people don't even realize this. You take that in to mean money makes people argue, money is bad, and if I want love, if I want a great relationship, then I don't want a lot of money. I'd rather have love than money.
And so we pick up on these belief systems that run the show for us, and so the job of the reticular activating system in your brain is to filter out anything that doesn't align with what your belief system is about what's true for you or not. So there's about a million bits of information coming at your brain at any given point in time, but your brain can only process about 173, and so the reticular activating system in your brain blocks out anything that tries to come in that won't align with what you believe to be true for you. And so if you've got that belief system that you don't deserve a lot of money or if you have money, it's going to mean you're greedy or bad, there will literally be opportunities that come to you that could help you hit your sales quota or your sales goal, and you'll filter them out. You won't even pay attention to them because it doesn't align with your belief system, because your subconscious will never make you a liar.
And so the work that helped me have that big financial leap, and that I also do with my clients now is the deep reprogramming work because when we can get the program to match the reality you want, your subconscious, its whole job is to go to work making your reality match what you think is true for you, and you can literally have anything, like you can literally do anything, have anything, but you have to create the belief system first that you can, otherwise you'll self-sabotage or you won't even see the opportunity when it's right in front of you.
Kurt Dupuis:
There's something that you mentioned that I think is in this realm of mindset is visualization, and so because we do hard-hitting research on this podcast, I did a couple Google searches and plenty of things pop-up about the science of visualization.
Elyse Archer:
Oh, absolutely. Okay, so when I say, "Ice cream cone," I want you to think about what you see in your mind. So do you see an image of an ice cream cone, or do you see the letters?
Kurt Dupuis:
Yes, with pink ice cream. Yep.
Elyse Archer:
Mine is pink too.
Kurt Dupuis:
And I never eat pink ice cream, so that's weird.
Steve Seid:
Mine was vanilla.
Kurt Dupuis:
We'll get into that later, Seid.
Elyse Archer:
So the brain thinks in pictures. When we want to create a new belief system, one of the best ways you can do it is by giving it images, pictures of what you want your reality to be. I work with some clients who say, "Oh, Elyse, I made a vision board a long time ago, and I thought it was weird and hokey, but I did and then nothing happened. So it doesn't work." So here's the thing, I'd say two key things with visualization that most people don't realize. Number one, you have to emotionalize it. How you get into the subconscious mind, you communicate to it with images and with emotions.
So if you're sitting there, and I'm looking at mine because I've had a lot of success with doing it, and so mine's in front of me right now and I'm sitting here looking at a picture of a car I want to buy for my husband. So it's like if I look at that and I just look at it, and I don't really feel anything, I'm not communicating powerfully to my subconscious, but if I look at it and I actually not only see the car, but see us in it, see us driving it, I take myself into the picture and then emotionalize the feelings of what does it feel like to be driving that car. Now the subconscious is bought in, because again, feelings are the language of the subconscious mind. So we have to emotionalize it.
And most people say, "Well, I'll feel it when it happens," but that's why it never happens. You never communicated to your subconscious the feeling state that you're looking to create with what you want. We hear people say like, "Well, I'm not a good visualizer." You're always visualizing. Do I ever worry about what's going to happen? Do I ever think about what I don't want to have happen? Worry is negative visualization, and it happens, whatever you focus on will expand. So if you worry about something a lot, guess what? You're going to walk right into it. It's going to happen because that's what your subconscious mind is focused on, and your emotionalizing it.
It's like the soil, whatever you plant in it with enough repetition will become your reality, whether it's positive or negative. It's agnostic. It doesn't care. It's only job is to make what you think about a lot and what you visualize a lot and what you emotionalize your reality. This is not to be a shameless plug, but I do a daily live stream where we talk about a lot of this…
Steve Seid:
Plug it.
Elyse Archer:
…and one of the books that we study together in the live stream is called The Quantum Leap. Excuse me, it's called You2. He rebranded it later, but You2 by Price Pritchett, and it explains why people have a quantum leap, and I read it after I had had my own quantum leap, and I was like, "Oh, that's actually why it happened." So that's a great one to read if you felt like you've been stuck and stagnant at a certain level for a while and you want to really create just breakthrough performance.
Kurt Dupuis:
People that are high achievers, and we could define that a few different ways, right? So financial professional, they have high AUM, their revenue is high, their income is high. By any statistical measure, they have made it, but one of the challenges is kind of finding the motivation or the tools to get that next level. A million dollar producer in our world, a financial advisor that's producing a million dollars in revenue, getting to two or five. Getting people to think that way is a challenge because so many people would view, "Oh, I hit a million. I've arrived," and so it's breaking through a lot of these challenges that you're talking about, getting from that one to the two to the five.
Elyse Archer:
And, Kurt, one other thing I'll add to your point because I didn't value my emotional state for most of my life, and that's why I found myself outwardly successful, but inwardly dealing with a lot of anxiety, dealing with fear about things, and it's because I didn't know how important our emotions are.
To go from that one to five, or two to five, is so amazing, and that you can do it by actually having more joy and peace in the process because no amount of... This is what I believe, no amount of money is worth dealing with panic attacks and anxiety, but so many people who look outwardly successful, are still, they're struggling with that stuff deep down and nobody knows, and it's actually what's holding them back from unlocking their next level of finances, of success. Yes, you can have the financial quantum leap, and you can experience peace and joy and freedom and happiness like you've never experienced before, and that will actually be the thing that takes you to that next level. So it's different than most of what's taught in today's business world, but it's true and I will preach it till the day I die because it's so, so important.
Steve Seid:
I don't want to preach complacency, but also understanding - what's enough?
Elyse Archer:
So I work with a lot of high achievers and to your question and to your point before about what is enough, we are wired as humans for expansion. So part of where we can kind of get tripped up with this is we're like, "Well, I already have a life that other people envy and they say is so amazing," so we actually make ourselves wrong for wanting more like, "Oh, I should just be happy with what I have, right? I should be satisfied with what I have." I believe you should be very happy with what you have and you are wired to continuously want to grow and expand. It's just how we operate. It's how we are as humans. So there's nothing wrong with wanting more, and in fact, I always want to go to the next level. That's part of our drive as humans, but if you have a belief system that to make more and to get to that next level, you have to keep doing more of the same of what you did before and you just have to work harder and more hours, you're not going to want to do it.
You're going to be like, "Well, there's no way. I can't work more than I'm already working, or I don't want to sacrifice time with the family," yada-yada. And so what I really work on with my clients, because in my own experience I work far less than I used to, it's way fewer hours, and I do this for my clients too. It's we consolidate their hours and they make... This stuff all sounds like it's not possible. It is. I promise it is possible, one, with the right mindset, two, with the right systems. But with my high-achieving clients, what we're doing is creating the belief system for them that it actually gets to be easier the more money they make, and the more they let it be easy, the more clients they bring in, the more they're in joy, the more they're in happiness, the more they're in fulfillment, the more clients and money they make.
Because what happens is when we're in those states, we're not in fight or flight, which is how most people live, they spend about 70% of their time in a high stress state, and when you're in that stress state, you can't create powerfully. There's literally parts of your brain that are shut off. So you're just in more survival mode. So when we focus on finding the feeling first of what you want to feel, and practicing that feeling of joy, and it's like how are you going to feel when you achieve that goal, when you're at 5 million, how does that feel? It feels like freedom, it feels like opportunity, it feels like expansion, it feels like happiness, right?
And when we practice that, you literally turn on different parts of your brain that will give you new ideas and inspirations to achieve that goal in a far easier, less efforting way than you might think it would be. So I'm really working with my clients on how can we be more strategic and how can we bring in more money and help you continue to expand, because that's what you're wired for, but do it in a way that is fun and feels light and is enjoyable? Because we think there's some destination we're going to reach and then we'll be happy, but I'm pretty sure it's just when you die. That's it. So if we don't honor the process along the way, what are we doing, right? So that's what I'm focused on.
Kurt Dupuis:
Those are great comments too because we talk a lot about the second part of that, not the mindset, but the systems. Especially Seid, he goes over the moon for systems. And we do a lot of data analysis with the financial professionals with which we work, so that comes second nature. This is already such an intriguing conversation though because we spend next to no time on the mindset part.
Elyse Archer:
Just real quick on that, Kurt. The systems are critical. Here's what gets exciting is when you marry those, when you have killer systems and killer processes, and you marry those with an unlimited mindset and actually feeling worthy of the success you want to create, which most people don't and they don't even realize that's one of the things that's blocking them, and you create that belief system that you can have it and you start to see yourself as the person who's already there, and your brain is now going to work, looking for more ways and opportunities for that to happen, and then you've got rock solid systems to help you, it's rocket ship. It's so powerful. So they're both important, they're both so important. It's just the mindset piece, to your point, is what most people don't spend time on, but it's like the secret sauce that'll help unlock a whole 'nother level.
Steve Seid:
Let's get into some of your podcast episodes. You could search She Sells Radio, and I think... What do you have, 100 episodes? Congratulations on that, by the way. That's a lot of content you put out there.
Elyse Archer:
Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, I think we're... I don't know, we're 120 now or something like that. But you guys know, it's a labor of love and it's fun when you enjoy it.
Steve Seid:
It is, but we just crossed 30 and change, and we feel like heroes. So to be at 120. God bless. That's amazing.
Elyse Archer:
Well, you're in a slightly different industry, but it takes a little longer probably in your space.
Steve Seid:
That's true. Good point. But I want to get into a couple episodes that we found compelling, and really, it's going to be hard because we have to take an hour long podcast episode and do it kind of relatively rapidly, but I think these are great concepts. One was sales and marketing secrets. So I'm just going to kind of run down, bring out some of the bullet points of that one, and have you kind of comment on each one. Is that cool?
Elyse Archer:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Steve Seid:
Okay. So let's talk about multitasking. You had mentioned the potential for that to be quite problematic.
Elyse Archer:
A lot of people pride themselves on multitasking, right? And as a relatively new mom, I kind of get it too. They did a study where they had people multitask and tested their IQ, when they were multitasking versus people who were stoned. Your IQ actually drops below the level it would if you were stoned when you try to multitask. You can't do it. I mean, you can task switch really fast, but you can't focus on two things at the same time. Your brain's not designed that way. And so I think that's one thing where if someone's looking for a way to become more productive in their practice, stop trying to cram two things in at once.
Literally focus on one thing at a time. And so much of this stuff, it's the opposite of what we're taught, but slow is fast. When we multitask, we make so many mistakes, right? Then you got to go back and you got to redo it, whatever you were just doing. So if you just focus on one thing at a time and completing it and being fully present, you can literally almost bend time by being more focused in what you're doing. So that was a very long answer to that multitasking question.
Steve Seid:
No, no. That's good.
Elyse Archer:
Multi-tasking is not effective, and is in fact a big lie. You can't do it.
Kurt Dupuis:
Yeah, and one of the practical applications was just turning off the notifications on your phone make you... That's singularly one of the most productive-enhancing things you can do.
Elyse Archer:
Oh, absolutely, yeah. And just have systems set up, have an autoresponder set up that gets back to people, but you don't have to be responding in the moment to everyone.
Kurt Dupuis:
We talk about time blocking. So what have you found there?
Elyse Archer:
I work with financial professionals across all range of experience, and I find a lot of times, especially when you're earlier on, you can have what you might call creative avoidance or procrastination with anything that could be sales-related, and it's funny because the one thing that's going to create clients for you is going out and prospecting and developing relationships, yet how often do we find ways to avoid it? Because it's uncomfortable and fear of rejection, and yada-yada. So just the little thing of scheduling time first thing in the day to do it, and time blocking that for whatever your outbound activity is, whether it's emails, whether it's calls, whether it's texts, whatever. How many of those does it take to generate one client, and then just reverse engineer it and assign a dollar amount to it, and it's like for every call, I make $20, $50, $100, whatever it is, and then just... You guys teach that too? Because it's just an easy, fun way to get some momentum going during that time.
Kurt Dupuis:
We do. We break revenue down by market hour, and there's 1650 market hours in a year. So the picture that we're trying to paint is maybe smaller clients... If you were running this strictly as a business, as a consultant, I would say, "Well, this client is allowed this much time because your time per hour is worth, let's say, $1,000. This client only produces $330, so that's 20 minutes of time." All as a way to crease more scale, more efficiency.
Elyse Archer:
I love that.
Kurt Dupuis:
If there's something that I don't have to do, outsource it. What are your thoughts on that one?
Elyse Archer:
Everything. Delegate everything you can, and one of my favorite things to do is keep a running list. Keep a list on your computer on your phone called, "Who else could do this?" And Kurt, to your point of whatever your hourly rate is that... Not that you made last year, but what you want to make. So whatever you want to make this year, calculate the hourly rate, and then anything that you find yourself doing that you wouldn't pay somebody else that amount for goes on that list.
When I was first starting off and didn't have enough cash flow to really just be hiring and scaling a full team the way we are now, I would once a month, go through that list and pick one thing, "What's one thing on this list that I could delegate this month?" And at first, it was hiring a VA for 10 hours a week, and you can do it for even less, you do one or two hours a week. And even personal stuff too, and people get weird about it like, "Oh, I'm going to hire somebody to do my laundry." A lot of this is limiting beliefs. If you grew up in a family where they didn't do that, you can sometimes feel a little weird doing that.
Kurt Dupuis:
That's me. I do that, yeah.
Elyse Archer:
It's what I would call a double blessing. You get the time back in your day and somebody else gets a job. We got to get into a little more of the abundance mindset here too to know that when you delegate things and get them off your plate, you have more time for more of those higher level opportunities to be coming to you.
Steve Seid:
I'm constantly lately talking to people about adding staff. People are so reluctant to do it, and I haven't really come across many financial professionals that hey, they added extra staff, regretted it. Okay, we're going to keep plowing down this list. So I'm going to breeze over a couple of them. Scheduling daily learning, great tip, pretty straightforward. We talked about visualization. The next thing you talked about was building a personal brand. Talk about that a little bit.
Elyse Archer:
People don't buy from companies, people buy from people, and people think with the personal brand that means I've got to go out and launch a podcast or launch a YouTube channel, and maybe that's it, and those can be great ways to do it, but people are going to... I mean, what's on your LinkedIn? 70% of the buying process is done before somebody even reaches out to you, and so the way I work with my clients on it is what do you enjoy doing? Do you enjoy creating content like this, podcast content, or do you enjoy doing video, or do you enjoy writing? Do you enjoy hosting networking events? Lean in on your strengths, you don't have to go become Oprah, if that's not what you want to do. That's not what I'm saying. Lean in on your strengths-
Steve Seid:
But you can. You could.
Elyse Archer:
You can, you can. I'm all for it. And then just focus on being a guide to people, like helping and being generous and sharing as much information as... I know, obviously, in a regulated industry, you got to be mindful of what you share, but share as much helpful information as you can, and that's how I hired my first financial advisor. There was a couple I was looking at, and she had a podcast and I listened to a bunch of her episodes, and I felt like I knew her. I didn't have to search a ton of other people because I felt like I knew her and I trusted her. Again, we could do a whole 'nother podcast on personal branding, but that's one of the fastest and easiest ways to grow your sales that a lot of people just aren't thinking about, or have resistance around.
Steve Seid:
Remind me, you have a whole episode with a branding expert?
Elyse Archer:
We've got a couple. We've got one recently, Dr. Robyn Graham, and then a company that I am a founding team member of, Brand Builders Group. We had Rory on, Rory Vaden on the show a couple episodes back, AJ Vaden, his wife and our co-founder. I'm huge fans of both of them, and so we've got a number of episodes on the podcast about personal branding. I mean, the crux of it is your reputation will always precede your revenue, so focus on building reputation first, and the revenue will always follow.
Steve Seid:
I loved your episode on closing. Touch on closing as a service.
Elyse Archer:
When I look at what parts of the sales process people tend to feel most awkward about, it usually... When we survey our audience, and you probably hear this, you may hear this from your advisors too, it's usually the close, right? To me, I think we define closing the wrong way. So if you only define closing as somebody saying yes to you and you getting the deal, signing the client, whatever, that's putting a lot of pressure on you and that's putting a lot of pressure on them, and that pressure will oftentimes kill the deal. And so when I talk about closing as a service, I define closing as just helping somebody make a decision, yes or no, in favor of their highest and best good. That is it. But when we think we have to push everyone into working with us, that turns people off, it creates scarcity mindset, and that's not doing the best thing for the client either. And I know there's a lot of lip service given to that in a lot of the sales space, but I don't think everyone lives by it.
I think you guys do from just your show and what you talk about here. So the biggest disservice to somebody is them staying in indecision. We all know how uncomfortable that is, right, when you're on the fence about something and you're hemming and hawing, and you haven't made a decision. It's a super uncomfortable place to be. So I would rather define closing as just help someone make that decision in favor of their highest good and if that's working with you, then you need to be fiercely committed to helping them make that decision, not in a pushy way, but in a helpful way. But if it's not working with you, you need to be okay saying that too, knowing that another client will come and another client will come, and we don't get to be attached to who becomes our client. To me, that's the mindset with closing, and we can dig deeper into that if you guys want, but I've found in my own life, when I closed that way, my closing rate of yeses went way up and it happens for my clients too.
Steve Seid:
Yeah, I would love to spend a little bit more time there. I see this with newer salespeople, there's a hockey analogy, gripping the stick too tight. They live and die by every sale to the point you just made about not getting held up if someone says no to you, as opposed to you don't need every client. I love that. You did a whole show and you mentioned a couple of concepts, abundance selling, scarcity mindset, beginning with the end of mind. Talk a little bit more about that.
Elyse Archer:
What I grew up with and what I was taught for years and years was what I call scarcity selling, which is the high pressure, you got to do this or else, and I remember vividly an experience when I was in corporate sales years ago, and I was the top producer in the office, so there was a fair amount of expectation of like, "If you go out, you're going to close the deal and bring it back." So I had gone out and met with this particular client that we were sure was going to close, and they didn't, and I remember coming back to the office and feeling like such a failure, and I walked through the office doors and my boss is standing at the whiteboard waiting for me to walk in, and he's got the pen on the whiteboard and he's like, "All right. What'd you close him for?" In front of the whole office.
And when I had to say, "They didn't buy," it was like his face, such disappointment. I felt such shame. And we've all had something like that, right? Even if it's self-imposed. And it's a great lesson that I've learned from now, but that to me, is so much of what is... Even if it's subliminally influences on sales teams and organizations, it's like, "If this person doesn't say yes, you're a failure and you need to hone your skills," and yada-yada. And so with scarcity selling versus abundance selling, scarcity selling, it's the hard close, it's if you don't do this by X date, the world's going to fall apart. It's pushy.
And here's the thing, it comes from a place of never enough. So we kind of talked before about the inner work and how important that is with this, and really what it is when I was selling this way because I did sell this way for years because I didn't know any different, what I didn't realize it was, was I actually didn't think I was enough and so I thought, "If I can just get this number, if I can just close this deal, then I'll feel valid, then I'll feel worthy," and I checked in on my clients with this too as we're working. I remember one of my private clients, a man who I coached privately, and he's in sales in a different industry, but he had a goal of a million dollars in income for this year, and I was like, "Great. Why?" And he kind of stopped and he paused and he said, "If I'm being honest, it's validation," and he was like, "That's-"
Steve Seid:
But it's a nice round number. I mean, it has to be good enough.
Kurt Dupuis:
Easy mental accounting.
Elyse Archer:
Right, exactly. I'm all for people making more money. That's my whole brand is about I love it. The more you have, the more you can do. You're meant to enjoy money, all of it. Yes, but if it's so you can feel like enough and so you can feel valid, you will never have enough. You won't. And so when we do that, we put our validation in a number and we give our power away to other people, to our customers, to our numbers, to our deals, to affirm that we're enough. It's never enough. And so the shift that I would love to help people make if they find themselves in scarcity selling is into one of what I call abundance selling, which is you already... You've done the inner work to know that you're enough as you are, you come into the interaction feeling whole, feeling complete, feeling worthy and good, and you're literally... It's like when you do that, there's something that you can't quite explain that will happen, but it's the energy you give off.
Your customers will almost close themselves because they pick up on... 93% of communication is nonverbal, right? So they pick up on that energy from you of like you're happy, you're fulfilled, you're joyful, you're worthy, you're abundant, and they want some of that. It's this concept called the impression of increase, which is all of us are wired for expansion, and when somebody picks up on that from you, they want it for themselves, and so your customers almost close themselves. And it's almost more of a pull, like you're drawing people into you, and so you don't require validation from anyone when you're showing up that way, and the sales and money flow more naturally from just who you're being. So there's some of that inner work that we got to do first to shift there, but when you do that, it's unbelievable what happens. It's unbelievable. That's how you feel great and you make way more money.
Steve Seid:
We have more to do with you. I hope you'll come back on because there's a bunch of questions that we're not going to be able to get to that I really want to talk to you about today, but before we get to our final question, tell everybody how they can reach you. We talked about She Sells Radio, we talked about all the stuff you're doing. Get it out there.
Elyse Archer:
Thank you so much. Yeah. Gosh, I appreciate that. Yeah, so the podcast is She Sells Radio. I'm @elysearcher on pretty much all social. We're doing a daily live stream right now every weekday morning at 8:30 Eastern. So if you want to come join, we talk a lot of mindset, a lot of sales strategy kind of like we've talked about here. So I would love for anyone who's enjoying this to catch that on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and then my website, elysearcher.com. You can submit a form, send an email, get in touch. Would love to connect with anyone who's enjoying this. So thank you. Oh, and I'll share one other thing, my team would yell at me if I didn't share this. If you want to get our free guide, our free download on five sales scripts to increase your closing rate by 50% or more, elysearcher.com/scripts will give you that as well.
Steve Seid:
Awesome, and I want to plug one other thing. You do offsites too, right? You take everyone out to Arizona was the one I was hearing you talk about.
Elyse Archer:
Yeah, you heard about Sedona.
Steve Seid:
I'm paying attention, yeah.
Elyse Archer:
I'm honored. Depending on when you're listening to this, December of this year, 2021, we are going to Sedona and we've still got some spots open for that. Yeah, it's going to be super powerful. Super powerful.
Steve Seid:
So what do you do in those? It's a couple of days, and you'll bring in outside speakers. What are those offsites for you look like?
Elyse Archer:
Yeah, so each one is a little bit different. This one is a lot of the personal power, stepping into that higher level of personal power, like we talked about a lot today on the show, and so we're going to do a lot of the mindset rewiring on the first day, and then the second day is more tactical business strategy going into the new year, just mapping out your full game plan. You probably can tell, I'm not about incremental growth, I'm about people 10x'ing what they're already doing, but doing it in a fun, enjoyable, sustainable way. So you'll leave with that blueprint and that game plan for achieving your revenue goals next year, and then there's a lot of fun surprises along the way. I like to make it a very VIP experience, so people can really be treated well and have just that next level experience of themselves in a VIP setting too. So it's going to be pretty amazing.
Steve Seid:
Kurt, I saw you smile on when you saw VIP. That's how you kind of visualize yourself.
Kurt Dupuis:
No. I was smiling for the 10x. That's the one that got me.
Steve Seid:
Yeah, I would like to 10x. I would like to do that. Okay. Yeah, I hope our CEO is not listening because he'll just raise our goals for next year after talking about it.
Kurt Dupuis:
Bad time for that conversation.
Steve Seid:
So let's finish on this, and you've been awesome. Talk to the women in our audience, what's your most recent messages to them? Where are you spending your time? Is it different than what we've been talking about, is it the same? I mean, I'd love to hear about that.
Elyse Archer:
Oh, thank you. Yeah, a lot of it is what we've been talking about today, and there's some nuances for women that are different. I'd say a couple of the areas where we focus on more for the female audience is, one, around visibility. There's just a lot of messaging as oftentimes, as a woman growing up, that if you're too this, people aren't going to like you, or can't be too... Little girls should be seen and not heard, right? And a lot of this stuff is generational too. We don't even realize we pick up on it from our parents, and they picked up on it from their parents. So you don't even have the-
Kurt Dupuis:
We both have girls too, so we're experiencing that.
Elyse Archer:
Yeah, and it's subliminal, or you don't look like the women on Instagram, so you don't feel worthy of putting yourself out there. So I find oftentimes with the women that I'm honored to serve, it's helping them feel really confident and stepping up and being visible, and a lot of the women in our community, it's like there's stuff that they've been holding themselves back from doing for years, some of them decades, whether it's really putting themselves out there for a new opportunity or launching a new brand or going after something they want, and it's like they felt like they needed permission to do it somehow, and something about being in the community, they're just finally like, "Gosh. I just realized I was the only one who had to give myself permission to do it."
So we work a lot about that, a lot on that, and then we work on... There's just interesting stuff when you dig into the science of this, like men's energy cycles go roughly every 24 hours. So as a man, you have roughly the same amount of energy every day, which means that the way our business world is wired, it's really well suited for a man. If you're going to do prospecting, same time every day, meeting, same time every day, email inbox, same time every day. But for a woman, that same energy cycle that takes a man 24 hours, lasts closer to 28 days, and so as a woman, we can often make ourselves wrong for it if we've got a couple days where we just feel kind of introverted and we don't really want to talk to anybody or do anything.
We think something's wrong with us and we think we'll just push through and do it, but there's actually a better way that we can do it, where if we can learn to adjust our sales and our business processes to match our energy cycles, where you've got a week of the month where you're actually really well suited for prospecting and being out and being visible and pitching, and then you got another week where you're probably better focusing on inward tasks, like working on your admin stuff and building systems and processes. When we can learn that there's not one that's better than the other, they're just different, and we can learn to map our activities with our energy cycles and match them…
Steve Seid:
Wow.
Elyse Archer:
…then you actually multiply your productivity and you're happier along the way too. It's stuff like that. It's little, but it's so big in the outcome it creates. And so those are a couple examples of things we're doing a little bit differently for women, but it's really, really powerful transformation.
Steve Seid:
Elyse, you are awesome. Thank you so much for coming on.
Elyse Archer:
Thank you guys so much for having me. This has been one of the most fun interviews I've ever done…
Kurt Dupuis:
Aw.
Elyse Archer:
…and I appreciate you both for having me and for being open to talking about different stuff too. So thank you so much for this.
Steve Seid:
Did you hear that, Kurt? One of the best. How about that?
Kurt Dupuis:
One of the best, I'll take it.
Steve Seid:
One of the best, we'll take it. Thanks to our new friend, Elyse Archer. Constanza Corner's next. This is The Whole Truth, stick with us.
Kurt Dupuis:
And welcome back. Were we right or were we right? Was that a great chat, or what? But welcome to the Constanza Corner, where we like to end the show on a high note, and Steve, you have something for us today.
Steve Seid:
Yes, I'll be quick. This a longer episode. I'll keep this very quick. I would hope nobody would debate this statement with me…
Kurt Dupuis:
I probably would.
Steve Seid:
…but are trees awesome? Trees are awesome, right?
Kurt Dupuis:
Trees are awesome. They're necessary. They're-
Steve Seid:
Awesome. The more trees, the better, right? We can all agree on this. Okay, so now I'm going to explain to you why. So they're doing these studies on the increased level of carbon in the environment, etc., etc., and they're looking at older trees, and long story short, older trees as a response of more carbon in the air are sucking more of it out of the air. So you're talking about things that would fight climate change and the change in the environment, the answer is, and there's got to be many solutions, but one of them is plant trees now.
Kurt Dupuis:
Mo trees.
Steve Seid:
The more trees you can do, the more, the better. Thanks for everyone for listening. See you next time.
Kurt Dupuis:
You can find The Whole Truth and subscribe for free on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. We'd love it if you took the time to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts. It helps others find the show. And for more episodes of The Whole Truth, go to www.touchstoneinvestments.com/thewholetruth. That's touchstoneinvestments.com/thewholetruth. All one word.
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