Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies
Danielle Cobo: Perhaps you have worked at your job for years, but you have an internal desire to do more. The goal, to make a greater impact, to do something that fulfills you, contribute to making a positive difference. Maybe you wanna have more flexibility and freedom, possibly you want to skyrocket, get your income doing what you.
In this episode, we talk about how women can achieve it all. Today's guest is Elise Archer. She's a founder of a Superhuman Selling, and she sells movements which empower entrepreneurs and sales professionals to revolutionize how they sell, explode their income, and achieve quantum leaps in all areas of their.
Her heart's passion is helping women learn how to sell in a way that feels authentic to them. Break through the six or even seven figure mark and become known as an expert in their field. Thanks so much for joining, Elise.
Elyse Archer: Thank you so much, Danielle. Oh, I'm so excited for this conversation. I know it's gonna be amazing.
Danielle Cobo: I had the opportunity to listen to you on another podcast and thoroughly enjoyed hearing your story and how you had a very successful career in corporate, but have made some quantum leaps, I would say, in your journey. So share with our audience a little bit about your background and where you started and how you got to where you're at.
Yeah, for sure. I went to school for journalism and I have this distinct memory in my journalism class. this makes me sound old, but I was gonna be a newspaper reporter. That was my vision and my goal. And I remember being in my news ed class and the professor said, Something about what you make as a newspaper reporter, and even for my college brain at that time, I could conceptualize how much life was roughly gonna cost on the other side of school.
And I remember thinking, there's just no way this is gonna cut it. So outside of I'd always just loved sales. It was kind of a passion. it just was kind of a. went at, when I got out of school, it was a very clear decision. I'm not gonna go to journalism, even though I love communicating and talking in formats like this.
And I went into corporate sales, working in media and advertising sales, and. Kind of played that game for years and went up the corporate ladder. you know, found myself in my mid twenties making a good six figure income, top of the sales leader board, had kind of accumulated all the things I thought were supposed to make me happy.
I had the nice house, the nice car And what I wasn't sharing with people at the time was how much inner turmoil I was in. So no one knew that I was struggling with panic attacks, with anxiety, with an eating disorder that I'd been struggling with for close to 17 years at that point. I'm, I'm happy to go wherever you wanna go with this, Danielle, but that was what started really turning things around for me, was when I started looking at, I've built this whole life that I thought was the thing that was gonna make me happy.
And yet I'm kind of miserable inside and I feel like I'm working all the time to make roughly the same amount of money and I'm not really feeling fulfilled, and I didn't really feel like myself anymore. so that. Maybe the dark night of the soul, we'll call it That, spawned a lot of soul searching that led me to ultimately leave corporate, start my own thing.
And I'm happy to talk about that process too, if that's helpful.
Yeah. And I think a lot of women out there can relate. Cause I'm hearing it more and more frequently. And you had this kind of revelation when we had talked in 2015, a lot of us are coming to this. Through the pandemic, we can went through the pandemic.
All of a sudden, many of us aren't living out of a suitcase anymore, traveling all the time, burning the candle at both ends, and we're having these moments of going, Well, what really matters to us? And what fills up that cup and what do we want this chapter to look like in their next life when things do open up?
And that was really the experience that I had and a lot of other people had as well. And I can understand where you're coming from, where it's We think that success is. A certain level of income awards, especially in sales president's, clubs, the company car that we have, or even the luxury car that we drive and we kind of hold this hat on.
This is what success looks like, but yet there's still a void. And that doesn't make sense to us because what society tells us versus how we feel can sometimes be different. walk us through, how did you make that decision to make that leap and say, Maybe I'm ready for something different.
Elyse Archer: Yeah. Oh, that's such a great question, Danielle.
I remember being outside sales and driving around to go visit clients and being. So uncomfortable with the voice in my head that was telling me something was wrong and something was off, that I just didn't want the silence. And these would be drives that were like a couple hours cuz of the, my territory.
And I couldn't sit there in silence and listen to the voice in my head that was like, this does not feel like you, like things are off. that was actually how I discovered podcasts at the time, and it was such an interesting. World that opened up because I grew up in a very analytical, very book smart family, like both parents are Ivy League grads and that the academics and book smarts were always celebrated and certainly are important.
well, I don't know that I actually that important anymore. Everyone has their own journey, but I'd never been exposed to personal development. that was something that was just not even. In my consciousness. I started, I kind of stumbled upon some personal development podcasts and it opened my eyes to this whole new concept that I could actually change my reality if there was something that I didn't like in my world, I wasn't stuck with it it's been so long that I'm, wanting to go back to what was my state at that time.
I think it gave me permission to start to do some of the inner. That really needed to be done to uncover what is true success for me at this point in my life. And wow, there's a lot of changes I need to make. I, didn't mention, I was also in a marriage at the time that was really unhealthy and there was a lot of fear around leaving that too.
And so there was a lot that I didn't wanna look at at the time, it, opened me up enough to be willing to start to look at making some big changes in my life. and one of those was leading the corporate job and. I didn't quite know what I wanted to do. I knew that I was good at sales and I knew that I liked coaching other reps on the team of how to sell in a way that was different than what was taught.
So all the sales environments I'd been in up until that point had been hyper masculine, almost punitive if you didn't hit your numbers. And there was a lot of struggle going on with the members of the sales team around me, people. Struggling with alcoholism, depression, uh, all sorts of things.
And I just remember thinking there's gotta be another way to achieve our goals. And as I started incorporating these elements of personal development and getting better and better results in my sales, I, I was really passionate about sharing it with others. And I thought, I'm gonna go out and start teaching people how to sell.
Like I'm gonna be a sales coach, but I'm gonna teach people how to do it in a really authentic and aligned way. And, Some of the conditions at work were so bad that I got to a point where it was like, I'm not gonna replace my income before I leave. Like I just gotta go. I think I had a two to three month runway.
It wasn't very long. I had one client who had paid me $300 to audit a presentation for him, . And I was like, is proof of concept. Best $300 I ever made. I made it outside of work, someone will hire me outside of this. And then I had a list of contacts. Today I would teach people, you kind of have to burn the ships to really go all in.
I think everyone is wired differently, but for me, and I think when we're really committed to something, having a plan B doesn't actually work very well. I had a plan B at the time. I had a list of context where it's like, if I have to go back to corporate, I can call these people, but I'm gonna make a go for this.
I put in my notice, and. That was also not a super easy process, which I can talk through if you like. just, it was kind of an intuitive, like, you've got to go. it was very much just an intuitive knowing, not a logical 10 step business plan, which frankly I've never done and I really see a whole lot of value in doing either.
So, I'll let you take that wherever you wanna take.
Danielle Cobo: It sounds like there's a lot of parallels in some of our stories where we had this very successful career in corporate and in sales, both of us being in sales, and yet there's this voice in our head that's going. You could do more or there's something else out there and you get to a point where all of a sudden you can't ignore it anymore.
It's a matter of going, Okay, I am either going to jump ship and go all in. And I like you kind of had a plan B every time I would apply to a new job. Cause I had left my job Then I would be like, Okay, well I'll just file for my llc. I'll interview for this job, but I'll just start also building my website.
Um, but it wasn't until going all in and saying, That's it. I'm not applying any other jobs where it was all in, where it just felt freeing and, The passion and the experience of really pursuing something that brings fulfillment and joy and impact was like nothing else out there, and it takes time to build, but.
there's no looking back. I like what you said. Sometimes you just gotta burn all the ships and say, Plan B is out the door. I'm all in. You really
Elyse Archer: do. Yeah. I think in so many ways that safety net, that comfort zone, it's such a cage and I know sometimes we feel like we need it and I get it. Cuz even in Danielle, you can probably relate to this You're going for up levels. I'm going for up levels, and there's this part of us that's at least I'll speak for myself that's still like, Oh my gosh, I feel like I need some sort of a safety rhetoric. this is so out of the comfort zone, so I get it. But every quantum leap I've had in my life has been because I stepped so radically out of the comfort zone that there was literally no choice but to go all in and be successful.
Like failure is not an option. yeah, it makes a huge difference.
Danielle Cobo: So what did that next step look like? You've, decided to say, Okay, I'm putting my notice in, which is a really scary move. Understand that. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . And I know if anybody's out there going, Oh gosh, I don't know if I'm ready to do that.
Can I do that? But what does that next step look like for you? And what were some of the things that you found helped you get to where you're at today? What were some of the struggles? What advice would you give to others who are thinking about it? Yeah, for sure.
Elyse Archer: So I'll share and, and to be completely fair, there's gonna be some overlap between things I was working on before I left and things that I did after, and I can't completely remember the order.
So I, I will do my very best to share roughly what was going on during that time. Cause it's been a while, but. I wanted to start the sales coaching company. So I'd been building out a website. and again, this is 2015, so some of this stuff was a little newer.
It was like easier to make a bigger footprint fast when you're doing this. But I've been building out a personal brand website. I, had. Started a, well, I didn't start a podcast, I became a co-host of a sales podcast with two other really cool guys who had already had the platform and invited me on.
The one thing I did too that really made a difference was I started a local networking group specifically for sales professionals, and that ended up really building my brand quickly in my market You know, so that I was able to go in and start having client flow pretty quickly. So I think a lot of it was about aggressive brand building as quickly as possible.
So those things had been in play. I I think all of those had been in play before I left, but it really gave me the freedom to ramp up and to start going. I did a daily sales tip video on social, which again, the video quality was terrible, 2015 you do a video and it gets a lot of views.
So that helped start building the brand. it was within a few months that I started really seeing some solid lead flow coming in. But again, so much of it, Danielle was about following intuition and those intuitive nudges. there was a podcast I had been listening to, a guy named Rory Vaden, and that was kind of my first, you know,
Danielle Cobo: I do from the national Speaker Associate.
Elyse Archer: There you go. Yeah. Rory's a good friend. He's, I mean, he is a good friend now, but I didn't know him at the time. And his podcast was the first foray interpersonal development that I had. And that got me through some pretty tough times. And I remember it was right around the time that I knew I was gonna leave.
I knew that Rory also had a company that had independent consultants and sales coaches as part of it. And I thought, I'm gonna reach out. And I actually decided to reach out to his wife, aj. Because I remember he had an episode where he talked about they're so just conscious of their marriage and think one of their rules was like they didn't take solo meetings with people of the opposite sex, which is, I was like, Cool, I'm gonna respect that.
So let me reach out to aj cuz I also knew she was pretty involved in the business. Let me tell her what I'm doing and see if I can just connect with them and see kind of how they built their sales coaching company. to me, it felt like a bold move cuz I didn't know them. They didn't know me.
But the brand building I'd been doing up until that point, when I reached out to aj, she saw the website, she saw the platform, she was like, You let's take a meeting. . I ended up becoming business partners with them, a couple months into when I left. And it was still, I was an independent contractor, but it gave me a place to come and plug in and really build a, really healthy, profitable sales coaching business fast.
the takeaway I would take from that is, Don't be afraid to reach out to people who may feel out of reach. Don't be afraid to put yourself out there. Don't be afraid to go for something, because guess what? You already don't have it. So the worst case that happens is you still don't have it.
But the two of them became dear friends and we went on to start another company together several years ago, and they're like amazing people. And they've been such catalyst in my journey and in my growth. And I think back to if I had not. Felt emboldened to reach out and make that contact. I don't know where life would be, but, gotta be bold and go for it.
yeah, those were a few
Speaker 1: things. I thought Those are two incredible people I love following their brand builders podcast. Yeah. And, and you spoke to the character and what's important to them. When they came, spoke at the National Speaker Association, their one rule was they'll come and speak.
if they get to take their family to Disneyland. And I thought that was just so cool. So much.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Just
Speaker 1: the type of people that they are and they really cherish that family. And I think that's also why some people do transition into starting their own company is that flexibility and that freedom to do what you love, but also to.
How much you spend time on different things where you spend your time. The nice thing is you and I are both speakers, so we get to take our family with us when we go different places and we get to choose when we, do certain things or not, or when we really prioritize some of our family stuff.
And that gives a lot of flexibility and freedom.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, it's everything. And I I became a mom after I became an entrepreneur. So I have such a space in my heart for our corporate moms, cuz I work with a lot of 'em and I don't know, but I hear like the pull, right, of wanting to be with your kids, but you've got these hours at work I worked with a mentor recently who specialized in working with moms and it.
One of the biggest things I got from it was we have to make our own rules as women about what we define as success, about how much time we're gonna work every day, and that it really is about deciding that. And I think analyzing, just cuz you've already done something this way, does it have to be done that way?
this particular woman I hired, she has like a three and a half million dollar business and she works about two hours a day and the rest of the time is with her kids. And to me, that was very helpful for context of what's possible. And it really freed me up as I've built my business to say I'm not gonna follow the traditional rules just because it's what's always been done.
Like we get to break the mold, we get to make our own rules, Yeah. I think for probably everyone listening, I would imagine, not everyone, but probably most people, like freedom is a core value. It's something that's, I think as human beings we're wired that way, and that is part of the beauty of having your own businesses.
You do get to make so many more rules your life. Mm-hmm. . Yeah.
Speaker 1: Insert ad before we had jumped on, I had shared with you. Heard from several women that I used to work with that are kind of hearing that voice in their head right now, and they're saying, I'm hearing it. I, I'm thinking I wanna do something different, but I don't know what that is.
I'm a little scared, but, you know, how did you do it? That's always the question I always get is, how did you make that transition? And they've seen a lot of the success that's taken place since I did leave corporate. Um, I guess my question is, What three things of advice would you share with those that are in the moment that You and I both were where we had very successful careers in corporate and we're going, There's something missing.
There's something more.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Number one, trust the voice. You have to trust it and you have to listen to it. It's not going to go away, so if you don't listen to it, I ignored it and suppressed it for a long time because I felt So uncomfortable about the implications of what it would mean to change a lot in my life.
And whatever we suppress has to come out in other ways in our life. So I know for a lot of the clients that I work with, those who suppress the voice in all different areas of life. And then that ends up manifesting in addiction, depression, anxiety, It feels hard, especially if you're like, I was, and you're like, I don't even want to be in the quiet because I don't want to listen to this voice.
Force yourself to do it. Like you don't have to act on any of it right now, but at least listen, I mean at the very least, give it some air time because that's your inner guidance. That's your higher self and it will never lead you in the wrong direction. Now sometimes when we are. Undoing a part of our lives or when we are moving in a different direction, Are there some.
Choices that feel painful in the moment. Are there some things that feel very scary to do? Yes, absolutely. You don't have to do it all today, and I promise you what's on the other side of that is everything you want. There's that great Joseph Campbell quote, The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek, that cave you fear to enter.
that's the voice, if that's listening to it, there's something in that for you and your job is just to be available and open to it right now. Go for a walk without your phone. get in nature. Go do something that gives you the space and the time to think and just be open. One that's so important.
So the second thing I would say to do, and this is an.
That one of my mentors did with me several years ago, and I believe it's a Kathy Heller original, so I wanna give her credit for it, but it's called Her Five Dream Lives. And I think this is so powerful, especially for somebody who maybe, you know, you wanna do something different, but you don't know quite what it is yet.
so it's gonna help you uncover your passions, your gifts, how you might start to link those into what you're gonna be building and doing next. the concept behind it is, Basically wipe the slate clean and forget who you are and what you're doing right now. And you say, You If I could live out any five dream lives, what would those be?
What would that look like? And you can think back to the things that you wanted to do when you were a kid. When you were a little girl that you said, Well, that's not practical. Or, I can't make money doing that cuz we all have those things. And then even now look to what gets you really excited.
again, if you could have it anyway. What would you love to do with your life and what do you look at other people doing? And you maybe have a limiting belief around, well, she can do it, but I can't. Or again, the things that maybe are your hobbies, but you think, Well, there's no way I could ever monetize it.
doesn't matter. Don't worry about how to make money with it right now. Just what would your five dream lives be? And when you journal on those, and when I did this, I had all these things come. That I had kind of put back to the side or said, Well, that's not practical, but you'll find it expands your vision so much and it helps you reconnect with some of those.
Native innate gifts and talents that were given to you for a purpose specifically that you put on the shelf and said, that's just not practical for my adult life. I would really encourage someone to do that exercise and look for what are the themes, what are the commonalities and what's.
Speaking to me, what feels expansive to me, That's your clue. I believe so firmly. Your desires are green lights. So whatever you look at on that list and you say, That is speaking to me, follow that. Your job is to follow that and it'll give you some clues for what could be next. And then the third and final thing I would say is start messy.
we talked about. A little bit before I tried once to make a business plan and it felt just, ugh. Like ,
Speaker 1: It felt like a task. Not fun. Exactly.
Speaker 2: And, here's the thing too, I, I kind of have this joke like Bob Proctor's kind of my spirit animal. Like I love. And have so much respect for Bob, for the late great Bob Proctor.
But you know, he always said you don't need to know how, when you are going after a vision or a goal, you don't need to know how and if it's big enough, frankly, you won't know how. if we're trying to figure out the how ahead of time, you're probably not thinking big enough. So this would be my advice.
You don't need to have the business plan. Follow the nudges along the way. start messy. What's the first thing I could do? I've got a client right now, a new client, phenomenal woman. we, we joke on our calls because I'm vegan ish and she was starting a hunting outfitting business, So am I helping her build this business?
And she's like, I wanna send you the videos of behind the scenes. And I'm like, I don't wanna see 'em. Like, please, I'm so happy for you and you. Don't send 'em to me, she's building this business and feels big because there's all these different elements of licensing and getting the right things in place and investing, and it was feeling, I think, heavy to her, understandably.
But we looked at. What's just one step you could do today towards that? the, cuz there's always a next step you can take. it became very clear there was this one next step she can take to move things in the right direction and it's within her reach and it's something she can do now. And I was like, Great, do that.
start messy. What can you do today? maybe you wanna go into coaching, can you send some dms and offer some complimentary coaching sessions to your network to. getting in the rhythm with that. Do you need to hire a mentor? Like There's always something you can do next.
But start, you have to start and follow the nudge and the path will be revealed as you go. I love
Speaker 1: how you said start messy because, looking back too, What we may have done day one when we thought going into our vision may be very different than we are at today. because of the pivots, I've found that more and more of my business has grown in the sense that women are coming and they're saying, again, I wanna get outta corporate, but I don't know what that looks like.
And it's. Now becoming a lot more of this business coaching and helping women achieve those goals. But a lot of times the catch up that we have is that, We always wanna know the how, but it's not always knowing the how. It's more really going into your heart and saying, What's your why? What do you want to do?
And then it's just taking it one step at a time. It's these steps that we take each day that do create these quantum leaps in our. It's
Speaker 2: so true Danielle. And one thing I'd love to add to that, that kind of helped me breathe a sigh of relief cuz when I first heard someone say, You don't need to know how, I was like, Well, but how exactly.
Speaker 1: always a question that catches me up that I always asked too.
Speaker 2: Right? if you study the way the subconscious mind works, the way your mind is created, once your subconscious has accepted something as true for you, so once you've created the vision and you've emotionalized it enough, and we've started to see ourselves in the picture, the whole job of your subconscious is to make your outer world match your inner reality.
And so you literally have a mechanism in your subconscious mind that's designed to help you get whatever it is you're thinking about and emotionalizing the most. all you have to do, Is fall in love with the vision. All you have to do is crystallize the vision. All you have to do is start to see it as true and as possible for you.
Now that can be the work, right? Because we sometimes, I think, always have some amount of limiting belief or resistance around it. So of course, so that's the work. But as your subconscious accepts for you, Gosh, like I could be an entrepreneur. Wow. Like I could actually go and do this. Maybe I don't see even the full picture yet, but I see the next step.
Its whole job is to look for opportunities, situations, circumstances that will help you get to where you wanna go. So your only job is to follow the nudges and the impulses from there. And they won't often be logical, They won't often be linear, but it's how it's designed. don't, you have a built in success mechanism.
You don't need to see the full how. That's the job of the subconscious. Your job is to get clear on the vision and fall in love with it and believe that it's true for you. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining today. You had so many pearls of wisdom and everything that you shared, I know so many of our listeners can relate to.
And for those of you that are tuning in and they're listening again, Follow that intuition, create a space. What I heard Elise really say is create a space of silence so that you can listen and create those five different dream lives that you get to pursue. So thank you for joining.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Danielle.
This has been great.
Speaker 1: Okay. For those of you listening, you know what I'm always gonna leave you with? Create an intentional day.