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Shiny object syndrome is very real in the entrepreneurship world. It's easy to think you have to do all the things to be successful. On this week's podcast, Sarah Ehlinger and Katrina discuss how to get out of your own way, believe in yourself, and trust in the transformations you're creating.

Sarah Ehlinger is an award-winning Designer, Creative Director & Brand Strategist for billion-dollar companies turned entrepreneur. A self-professed "personal growth junkie", she loves exploring the areas where business, branding, and mindset commingle to create magic. She also empowers business owners with easy-to-implement tools so they can get out of their own way and just get to it!

Website // Instagram // Brand Clarity Breakthrough Session

The episode:

Katrina Widener: Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Badass Business Squad Podcast. I'm your host Katrina Widener and today I am very excited because we have special guest Sarah Ehlinger on today to talk all about mindset and branding and how entrepreneurs usually tackle things a little bit backward and why this keeps us stuck. So thank you so much Sarah for coming on today, I'm really excited to have you here. 

Sarah Ehlinger: I am too! Thank you for having me. 

Katrina Widener: Before we dive into this topic, would you mind sharing with everyone a little bit more about what you do, who you are, and what type of entrepreneurship you really are involved in? 

Sarah Ehlinger: Yeah, so I am a strategist and coach. I call myself a brand alchemist and what that means is that I have a background that really draws on all of the things that go into making a brand. So that's creative direction, strategy, product development, even art licensing and illustration, photography, graphic design. So I had a friend recently called me a creative polymath, and I was like, "Yes thats very apt," you know? So I draw on all those skills. I use those to help my clients take their passion and story, experience, their unique brilliance, and really mold that into a personal brand that is magnetic and that you yourself are really excited about. 

I got to this place in my entrepreneurship, I've been working for myself for about 12 years. I was working as a freelance contractor, as a creative director, and strategist for agencies and corporate clients. And a couple of years ago, it was actually right at the beginning of COVID, and I was just so burned out on that and just felt like "I can't do this anymore. I cannot keep going. I don't know what I'm going to do but I'm not going to do this anymore." And I stopped working with all of my agency clients, all my photography clients, and that's when I started doing Canva templates and stock photography. 

And that was great, but I quickly realized my idea was, "You're getting in your own way. Here's some tools that can very quickly and easily help you get your stuff out there and look super professional. Super great." And I had customers that were still just spinning and spinning. "What set do I pick? And what colors do I choose?" They were really spinning out and I had to take a step back and be like, "Why is this happening?"

It became very clear to me very quickly, how closely related mindset, personal growth, and building a personal brand are. It was the same stuff I had struggled with when I was going out on my own and had to put myself out there in different ways. So that's really how I came to this coaching part and drawing on all of my experience. Plus, you know, my being in love with personal growth and all of that. Really combining the two and helping people get out of their own way and just get to it. 

Katrina Widener: That makes so much sense too, with the topic that we're talking about today.

Sarah Ehlinger: Yeah. 

Katrina Widener: Because it really is all about getting out of your own way and no longer being the reason why you're not moving forward, because so often we're just the ones who are self-sabotaging or accidentally standing in the way of what we want.

Sarah Ehlinger: Yeah. And we have no idea, no clue that we're doing that. 

Katrina Widener: Right. So when we're talking about how entrepreneurs do things backwards, would you mind just sharing with everyone a little bit more about what that actually means? When we're talking about people doing it backwards, what does that look like? How can someone identify if they're the ones doing that? 

Sarah Ehlinger: So the easiest way to identify that is you are continuing to purchase courses, buy all the $37 products that are coming through your Facebook and Instagram feeds, you're showing up to all the free webinars, you're reading all the books, you're doing all of this stuff, but you're still just spinning your wheels. It's just happening over and over, and you feel like, "Oh I just have to collect more knowledge. I have to collect more knowledge. Maybe really I need to have this weird sales funnel sequence that I just read about." Like, you're continually trying all the things, but you're kind of getting nowhere. 

Katrina Widener: Uh huh. 

Sarah Ehlinger: The reason why that's happening is because our brains are specifically designed to keep us safe, and one of the ways that our brains keep us safe is they keep us blending in. They want us to be part of the community. They want us to stay small, not stand out, and you see where that starts to present a problem when you're trying to create a brand and step out in a big way that you've never stepped out before, right? Because your brain's going to be like, "No danger danger, please don't do that. Stop everything you're doing." So then a way to pacify that is then to just jump to all these different strategies. To jump to like, "Oh I need to work on an Instagram strategy," or, "Oh I need to follow the next shiny object."

And so what we do is we look around still trying to play it safe. We look around and we see what everybody else is doing. And we see, "Oh they hired this coach" or "they joined that program. Now they're doing Reels the certain way and I'll just do that. I'll just do that and then that will lead to success, and I don't actually have to put myself out there or do that like deeper work that really makes me vulnerable in my business as an entrepreneur."

Katrina Widener: Right. 

Sarah Ehlinger: And so that's what I mean about doing things backwards. It's really easy just to jump into the strategies and the tactics and the shiny objects, instead of really taking a step back and thinking about, "No what is it that I really do? Who am I serving? Why am I serving them? Why does it matter to me? How am I doing it in a way that's super unique to me? And what is the brilliance that I'm drawing upon?" And without really figuring that stuff out, all the tactics and strategies aren't going to make a difference. Now the beautiful news is if you have invested in all of these things, once you take a step back and do that foundational work, you can revisit all of that stuff you've invested in and get so much more out of it now, you know? 

Katrina Widener: It's so interesting because I feel like oftentimes when people start their businesses, they're just like, "I'm going to do this thing. I like taking photos, so I'm going to become a wedding photographer. Or I'm really interested in graphic design, so now I'm going to become a website designer," Or whatever that looks like. And it's always sort of this combination of "But why and for who?" 

We think of those who, what, when, where, why and how questions, and very rarely do entrepreneurs start out with that foundational work done. I feel grateful because when I first started my business I worked with a coach local here in the Twin Cities area named Jasna Burza and she and I were able to do a lot of this foundational work, really dig in even to the point that she was like, "You know, like some of the questions I'm asking are for me to evaluate 'Is she going to be a good coach?' I'm a coach, I know." 

And to be able to say "Who am I serving? How am I doing it? Why am I doing it? All of those questions are so important, but so often entrepreneurs jump straight into the how. How am I going to market it? How am I going to start this? Or just straight into doing, without even thinking about the whole. 

Sarah Ehlinger: Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that, that's how a lot of us get started. It's like, you gotta jump right into it. But I found it with myself and I found it with my client, that there's two things that come up. First I hear a lot of people saying, "I don't know how to talk about what I do. Or it doesn't make sense. I hate marketing." Those are two things that I hear a lot of. And once you step back and do this work, and you really are firm in those things, the who and the what and the how, and all of that, suddenly you know exactly how to talk about what you do and then you can't help yourself.

And then marketing is no longer a drag and you don't hate it anymore because you know the exact messages that you want to get out there. It almost becomes boring which is a good thing, you know? I'm just repeating these same messages over and over. That also is like a mindset hurdle to get over because then your brain is going to be like, "Wait where's the chaos, where's the drama?" and you're going to try to sabotage yourself at that step too, but that's a whole other topic for another day. But it's about getting those foundational pieces down like just make everything so much easier and takes away a lot of that drama. 

Katrina Widener: Right, and I'm glad that you brought that up too, because once you've done that foundational work, it makes it so easy to trust that you know what you're doing. To trust that, "This feels easy. This feels aligned." So often that happens where it's like, "It feels easy, so I don't trust it because I've been told that it should be a struggle. Otherwise, why would there be 300,000 courses out there for me to pick from, or all of these business coaches?"

Sarah Ehlinger: Yep. 

Katrina Widener: And I had a client meeting this morning where she was like, "I don't feel like I have this repeatable strategy." And I was like "Oh, isn't this your repeatable strategy, isn't this what we've talked about?" And she was like, "Yeah you're right, it is." But I have clients where we keep checking in being like, "Nope."

Sarah Ehlinger: It's like it's too easy and too boring. 

Katrina Widener: Exactly! Exactly. It's trusting that repeatable strategy, even if it feels like it's easy. 

Sarah Ehlinger: And also I've found with some of my clients that I say over and over, "Your customers and clients that you want to hire you, they're never going to believe in you if you don't believe in yourself first." 

Katrina Widener: Right. 

Sarah Ehlinger: You have to get to that point where you really, really believe in yourself and what you're doing and the transformations you're creating, or the products you're selling. You have to believe in it one hundred percent. This is why it's kind of like chicken or egg type of thing, because part of believing in yourself is doing that foundational work and being able to look at it and be like, "Oh my god, I am an expert. I do know what I'm doing. I do understand my customers and clients." So having that tangible piece actually helps you believe more in what you're doing, which then helps others believe in you. So it's all very interconnected. 

Katrina Widener: Definitely. And it also kind of creates that filter that you can go through whenever you're looking to make a new decision or bring something new into your marketing strategy, or something new into your business, like a new service or a product or whatever it is. You can go back to that foundational work you did and say, "Well is this new service actually serving my audience?"

Sarah Ehlinger: Oh yeah, that's a super good point. 

Katrina Widener: "Is this new marketing strategy going to reach the people who I'm actually talking to?" Because it is so easy to get caught up in the chaos of, Well this person's doing that and this person is doing this, maybe I should be doing those things. And to be able to have something foundational, to look back on and say, "Wait actually no, I don't need to do that thing because I have these things that are working." Or "Yeah, actually that would be a really helpful thing for me to include into my business." 

Sarah Ehlinger: Yeah, it kind of lets you let go of things with grace. 

Katrina Widener: Yeah! 

Sarah Ehlinger: There's nothing wrong with a pivot either, but then it also lets you recognize when you're intentionally pivoting, versus when you're just chasing a shiny object. Because then if you have this foundational work, you actually do have to look at that and make a decision and have intention behind that thing. If you look at it and you're like, "No this isn't serving who I want to serve, but I still do want to go down this road," then you have to be intentional about, "Okay, am I making a pivot here? Or am I going to let this go with grace?" 

Katrina Widener: Right. Which for me personally, I can even anecdotally tell everyone listening, I have made those shifts, right? I've made those pivots where I've been like, "You know, this work that's aligned with me and who I am and all of that kind of stuff, is not aligned with my current audience."

Sarah Ehlinger: Right.

Katrina Widener: And so then the choice is "Well do I pick something that's aligned with my current audience or do I pick something that is a new audience," and I've shifted who my ideal audience is over the course of my five years of business.

Sarah Ehlinger: Right and we all do, but it's being able to make those shifts with intention, versus just jumping around and kind of getting nowhere with it.

Katrina Widener: Right. Making the shifts with intention and making the shifts with confidence, right? Being able to say, "I know for a fact that this is the right call for me and for my clients and for everyone involved in this situation." 

Sarah Ehlinger: Yep, it's very powerful. 

Katrina Widener: Yeah, and to bring it back to what we were talking about beforehand, how many people are doing it backwards, right? Or honestly sometimes people aren't doing it at all. Where they're just still in that "Do do do, go go go" mode and aren't paying attention to, "Okay actually, why am I here? What am I doing? What is my purpose?" So yeah that makes so much sense. 

Sarah Ehlinger: Yeah, and I think it also helps to know, we talk about doing things backwards, the empowering part about that is taking a step back and figuring this out. Not to say that you can have shiny object syndrome, but you can look at all these different things. And I'm a big fan of "You don't have to eat the whole apple, you know? You can take a bite for the part that makes sense for you." 

I think I know for myself, I would always fall into the trap of like, "No I took this course. I need to do all of it or I failed, you know?" And now I can look at it and say, "Nope. Some of this makes sense for me, but some of it does not. I don't have to follow all of it, and I can be empowered to make that decision without feeling like I just failed or didn't use my investment wisely."

Katrina Widener: It makes a lot of sense, and I think that having that foundation and doing that work first and then doing the courses or coaching or education, whatever form of education you're choosing second, also allows you to then choose the right courses and choose the right education, so that long-term, you're saving money. 

Sarah Ehlinger: I know I mean, we have all done it. We've all done it where we see someone else sign up for a course or a mastermind or program and we're like, "Oh I have to do that too," and then you get in there and you're like, "This is not for me at all," you know? 

Katrina Widener: Yeah. Oh my gosh, ugh! For me it was like, I came from a marketing background. I came from a social media search engine optimization, writing, editing, all of those things. I came from that background and I was like, "Oh, I just bought a course to teach me what I spent my professional life doing." That was not the right call for me. 

Sarah Ehlinger: Yeah. You know, you just brought up a really good point too, that I haven't really thought about much. I had a design, branding, marketing background, and once I started investing in all these popular online courses, I started mistrusting myself. 

Katrina Widener: Ooh yeah. 

Sarah Ehlinger: And thinking I didn't know enough and being like, "Oh my god!" And you just start getting smaller and smaller and smaller, and it's like, "No I actually have the credentials and the experience and the expertise to back this up." But I was no longer trusting it because this was a whole other different set of information that I wasn't familiar with. So it was just really muddying the waters for me. 

Katrina Widener: Well I think it's just very indicative of the entrepreneur journey in general, which I know happened for me, and it sounds like happened for you and has happened for so many of my clients and colleagues and friends. You start off saying, "Hey, I love this thing and it looks like I could make money doing this thing. Let's just go do it." And then as you go to your first networking event, or as you start following other entrepreneurs, and as you kind of wade deeper and deeper into the water of being an entrepreneur, you're like, "Hold on a second. I just opened the door to a world. I didn't even know existed, and now there's like flashing signs everywhere." There's billboards all over the place and then you just are like, "Oh god I'm overwhelmed. I'm feeling small. I'm feeling tense and tight, and I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing." 

By having this foundation again, you're almost able to put a bubble around you and say, "No, this is who I am. This is who I serve. This is what I do." And it's able to kind of calm down a little bit. And that doesn't mean that you're not going to have moments when it is just overwhelmed again.

Sarah Ehlinger: I mean, I have those every week still, you know? Every week and every day. The thing is once you start to recognize this, and once you start to make that link between mindset and what you're building, you can actually witness your brain throwing this stuff at you. 

Katrina Widener: Yeah! 

Sarah Ehlinger: And I literally I had something come up last night, I was talking to my coach about it this morning. I'm like, "Oh my god, my brain tried to throw the most hilarious thing at me last night." But I was immediately able to recognize it and be like, "That's cute, but moving on," you know? Whereas in the past that would have derailed me for months.

Katrina Widener: Right, right! I have also been the type of entrepreneur where I'm like, "Okay. That little voice in my head that sometimes trying to get me a stay small, or sometimes being like, 'oh I'm going to throw this thing at you,' I call it Voldemort." 

Sarah Ehlinger: Ha! I love that! 

Katrina Widener: If I separate it from myself, this isn't coming from me, this is coming from my subconscious first and foremost. Also whenever we're doing something new and different in an environment that's new and different, our central nervous system gets activated. So our body is separate from us, right? We're feeling uncomfortable because our body is feeling uncomfortable, because our brain is trying to keep us from being attaked from a bear, even though the bear is speaking on Instagram stories. 

Sarah Ehlinger: Right!

Katrina Widener: So it's also easier when you have this foundation to be like, "No that part of my brain is not me. That part of my brain is Voldemort." Or "No, this is not me reacting to this. This is my central nervous system reacting to it." And separating those two things out so that we can say, "I'm grounded, I'm safe in my foundation of who I am. Those things are outside of me. Being able to really get grounded first, gives you the ability to bring this into everything else. 

Sarah Ehlinger: Yeah, it's so important because the reality is becoming an entrepreneur is embracing a life and a journey of discomfort. 

Katrina Widener: It is. 

Sarah Ehlinger: It's all going to be discomfort like that is never going to go away because there's always going to be a next thing or something more that's going to ask you to embrace that discomfort. Embracing discomfort is going to lead to everything you just talked about over and over and over again. So being able to come back and get grounded in what is the truth, and why you were doing it, really helps to very quickly shut all of that down. Because it's just going to keep happening over and over and over again, and when you can show up and say like, "No this is okay, this is exactly what's supposed to be happening. Thank you brain and body for responding exactly how you're supposed to be responding to this." 

Katrina Widener: That's it. I mean, that's the whole thing. Well, thank you so much for coming on here and sharing. I feel like we could keep going for quite a long time on this subject because we are very aligned. 

Sarah Ehlinger: Oh my God. For sure.

Katrina Widener: Before we jump off, I was hoping you would share with all of our listeners first, where they can find you after the call.

Sarah Ehlinger: So I am most active on Instagram, that's the best place to find me. You can find me there at a @brandspanknyou. So you can find me there, shoot me a DM. That's where I'm most active, and will most likely to be responding to your messages and all that good stuff. Otherwise, my website is www.bebrandspankingyou.com and that's where you can find my templates and stock photos too. 

Katrina Widener: Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that, and we will link it all in the show notes for everyone who is interested as well. Thank you so much for coming on today. 

Sarah Ehlinger: Oh my God thank you, this was a joy.

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