Brooke Elder: “To rise through resilience create a morning routine that involves personal reflection, meditation, and visualization”
Create a morning routine that involves personal reflection, meditation, and visualization. This has been the number one thing that has helped me when I am faced with a challenge. Being able to know what you want, know it so deeply because you think about it every day has really been the key to my success.
In this interview series, we are exploring the subject of resilience among successful business leaders. Resilience is one characteristic that many successful leaders share in common, and in many cases, it is the most important trait necessary to survive and thrive in today’s complex market. I had the pleasure of interviewing Brooke Elder.
Brooke Elder believes that true authenticity, paired with proven strategies, can yield massive results and great fulfillment. She is a 7-figure business owner who also homeschools her four children. Brooke started her business just 3.5 years ago and quickly grew it to 7-figures in only 18 months. She has had her share of ups and downs; between health issues and balancing mom and business owner responsibilities, she’s learned that having tenacity is essential for her success in all aspects of her life.
Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory
I started teaching first grade because I have always loved teaching. However, not long after my teaching career began, my income was cut in half. I discovered that while I still wanted to help teach others, I needed to supplement the significant loss of profit, which is why I turned to network marketing. My husband worked nights, so I had to find creative ways of marketing and building my business outside of regular daytime hours. I decided to utilize Facebook before it was a valuable marketing tool for companies.
I wanted to grow my business, but there weren’t a lot of courses on how to do that through network marketing. Back in 2010, it seemed like utilizing Facebook as a networking tool was frowned upon if you weren’t using it per the “status quo.” Since I like to prove that I can do hard things even when people say I can’t, I made every effort to stand out, and I set myself apart by learning everything I could about online marketing.
At this time, I also had created an online training center for the company I was working for. It trained my team and other teams throughout the company. At one point, I had over 10,000 people attending training at the center, which prompted me to think about potentially making training others into a business where I could be my own boss. The idea spurred what is now Social Tenacity.
It took almost filing for bankruptcy and one horrible failed business venture to propel me toward creating Social Tenacity. After I invested in a coach, I achieved my goal of having a 7-figure income in just 18 months.
Can you share with us the most interesting story from your career? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?
I’ve found that the success to my business includes having people around me who are both smarter and more educated than I am. When I first started my business, I wanted to hire people who could alleviate job responsibilities and who could do the things I didn’t love doing. I would often hire people just because I liked them and I thought they would do a good job. I quickly learned that just because I liked someone, it didn’t mean they were a good fit for the company. While hiring potential employees was challenging at first, now I know how important it is to put people in my path who put the needs of the business first. Unfortunately, I’ve had past employees take advantage of their positions and authority at the expense of the company.
I’ve learned that a business is only as good as the people who run it, which is why I only hire people with integrity and those who aline with my business ethics.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Social Tenacity stands out because we empower women to use their gifts, strengths, and talents to help others in their life journey. I believe that our experiences in life are given to us to improve the ones behind us.
One of my clients is now able to assist other mothers who have children with special needs using her business and network marketing as the vehicles to induce positive change.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
I’ve been very blessed to have different mindset coaches who’ve helped me view things differently and get past Imposture Syndrome or those feelings of “I’m not good enough.” Thanks to them, I know how to get past my feelings of inadequacy, to see my strengths and potential. It’s nice when others remind me of my good qualities when I have a hard time seeing them.
Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. We would like to explore and flesh out the trait of resilience. How would you define resilience? What do you believe are the characteristics or traits of resilient people?
To me, resilience is all about tenacity, which is why I named my company Social Tenacity. Having resilience means knowing what I’m scared of and being willing to lean into that fear and use it for personal growth. When I’m afraid to do something, I’ve trained myself to believe I can achieve it. I won’t let fear keep me from what I want most.
Ironically, fear and excitement run on the same neuropathway in our brains, meaning we can choose to be excited about a certain situation even when we may be scared out of our minds. My five-year-old daughter is a wonderful example of someone who chooses excitement over fear. Recently, while standing in line for a “scary” ride at Disneyland, she said, “Mom, even though I’m really scared to go on this ride, I’m going to choose to be excited.”
When you think of resilience, which person comes to mind? Can you explain why you chose that person?
When I think of someone who embodies resilience, I think of Walt Disney. I look up to him for following a dream that was way bigger than himself. No matter what other people may have said to discourage him, he didn’t give up and persevered.
Everyone told him that creating a theme park was a big waste of time, but now Disneyland is a household name and more significant than anyone could have imagined.
Has there ever been a time that someone told you something was impossible, but you did it anyway? Can you share the story with us?
Anytime someone tells me that I can’t do something, I have a duty to myself to prove them wrong. I like to show people up.
When I first started my business, I hired a coach and told her that I wanted to have a million-dollar business by the time I was 35. She knew my situation and said, “Well, I don’t think you can really do that.”
Achieving this goal became my mission. I didn’t let my circumstances stop me, and I hit my goal within two days of my 35th birthday.
Did you have a time in your life where you had one of your greatest setbacks, but you bounced back from it stronger than ever? Can you share that story with us?
We put all of our life savings into a car dealership we were sure would be successful. When everything told us things were terrible, we wanted to believe it would get better. I got to be an excellent problem solver every month, trying to figure out how we would scrape by. While things didn’t turn out how we would have expected with that business, we ultimately learned what business we did want to be in.
Without failing at selling cars, I never would have had the guts to go for my dream and start Social Tenacity.
Did you have any experiences growing up that have contributed to building your resiliency? Can you share a story?
From a young age my mom would say I was very stubborn and independent. I remember when she took me shopping for school clothes to start Kindergarten she picked out some outfits for me. She help up the first one to see what I thought. I looked at it and boldly said, “You can buy it, but I’m not going to wear it.”
I have always been very driven and wanted to accomplish anything I set my mind to. That passion and self-awareness really helped me throughout my life to show up with a confidence that help build my resiliency muscle in my life.
Resilience is like a muscle that can be strengthened. In your opinion, what are 5 steps that someone can take to become more resilient? Please share a story or an example for each.
Here are five steps I think will help some become more resilient.
- Identify something you’re scared of and do it. I had a fear of fish, I know strange. When I was 2 years old I fell off our family’s sailboat and I swear fish were sucking on my toes. I have been afraid of fish ever since. When I started this business I wanted to prove to myself that I could do hard things so I put my feet in a lake where there were about 100 carp all in one place. I only did it for 5 seconds, but because of that experience I can now lean on that when things are tough because I can do things I am scared of.
- Train your brain to be excited by anchoring your belief. This is one of my favorite techniques. What you do is think of something that really excites you. For me it is standing in line for Tower of Terror in Disney World. I feel the excitement just thinking about it. Then I squeeze my fists to anchor that feeling. Now any time I feel scared or I feel like I can’t do something, I squeeze my fists and that feeling of excitement comes rushing through my body and then I can move forward with excitement instead of fear.
- Surround yourself with people who believe in you. You are the sum of the five people you surround yourself with. You really can’t afford to surround yourself with people who are not helping you become the best version of yourself.
- Work on your mindset and have tools available to you that will help get past your inadequacies. Life in general is going to make you stretch and becoming a business owner expedites the process. Having tools and people to talk to has been a game changer for me every time I feel an up-level coming on.
- Create a morning routine that involves personal reflection, meditation, and visualization. This has been the number one thing that has helped me when I am faced with a challenge. Being able to know what you want, know it so deeply because you think about it every day has really been the key to my success.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
The movement or belief that I’m trying to create now is that network marketing is the gateway to entrepreneurship. There are so many awesome things available in the marketplace as the result of network marketing. Sadly, there is a negative stigma associated with networking marketing, and I want to change that. My mission is to change the way women think. I want to help them believe that while they may be network marketers, they can still be authentic and unique too. They can show others who they are through their gifts, talents, and strengths and help make a difference — the real reason beyond the products they sell.
We are blessed that some very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them 🙂
Neil Patel is someone I would love to have a private breakfast with. I’ve followed him for many years and devoured every bit of content I could. When I first started my network marketing journey, I learned a lot from his online marketing strategy.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
https://www.facebook.com/socialtenacity/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/prosperousdirectsales/
https://www.instagram.com/socialtenacity/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSo6M1Bz633Hxplt8y-msdg
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Brooke Elder: “To rise through resilience create a morning routine that involves personal… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
