Elisa Doucette writes about relationships, life lessons, activism, young professionals, and women for anyone looking for a little truth. Her work has been featured on MaineToday, in Portland Press Herald, The Boston Globe, Current Publishing, and many others. In addition, she writes a featured blog for Forbes.com and Forbes Women called “Shattering Glass”.
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Resource Mentioned:
- Your Big Idea: Successful Entrepreneurs have One Big Idea. Follow JLD’s FREE training & you’ll discover Your Big Idea in less than an hour!
Success Quote
- “To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.” – Unknown
Business Failure
- Elisa woke up in her car, which she was living out of, with a tow truck hitching up to it, as it was being repossessed. Wow, that is a lowwwwww point. Listen to how she clawed her way up and out of that pit.
Entrepreneurial AHA Moment
- Elisa realized that it was as easy to write for a lot of money as it was to write for a little, maybe even easier. Listen to find out how she designed her craft to align with this new revelation.
Current Business
- Elisa now writes when she wants, from where she wants, and with the voice she wants. Listen to the freedom she has, and how she takes full advantage.
Lightning Round
- Elisa reveals a killer internet resource. It may save you an hour a day, and allow you to rest easier.
Best Business Book
- Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday
Interview Links
Killer Resources!
1) The Common Path to Uncommon Success: JLD’s 1st traditionally published book! Over 3000 interviews with the world’s most successful Entrepreneurs compiled into a 17-step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment!
2) Free Podcast Course: Learn from JLD how to create and launch your podcast!
3) Podcasters’ Paradise: The #1 podcasting community in the world!
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Full Transcript
John Lee Dumas: Hire Fire Nation and thank you for joining me for another episode of EntrepreneurOnFire.com, your daily dose of inspiration. If you enjoy this free podcast, please show your support by leaving a rating and review here at iTunes. I will make sure to give you a shout out on an upcoming showing to thank you!
John Lee Dumas: Okay. Let’s get started. I am simply thrilled to introduce my guest today, Elisa Doucette. Elisa, are you prepared to ignite?
Elisa Doucette: I am!
John Lee Dumas: Awesome! Elisa writes about relationships, life lessons, activism, young professionals and women for anyone looking for a little truth. Her work has been featured on Maine Today, Portland Press, The Boston Globe, Current Publishing and many others. Additionally, she writes for a feature blog for Forbes.com and Forbes Women called “Shattering Glass.”
I’ve given Fire Nation a little overview, Elisa. Why don’t you take it from here and tell us who you are and what you do?
Elisa Doucette: I am basically a writer and editor. So what I do is I do a lot of writing of opinion editorial type pieces. I tend to slant a lot more towards writing about young professionals and something called “modern feminism,” or “new wave feminism,” because basically, now that you don’t have women all trying to break into the boardrooms and then figuring out how they fit into the boardrooms, I write a lot about the fact that they’re now in the boardrooms and what are we going to do about it.
I also write a lot about travel, and especially travel as a single, young woman, which is pretty much what I do with my time.
John Lee Dumas: Awesome! I really look forward to delving into that later because you have some great stories that I’m looking forward to share with Fire Nation, who is a bunch of travelers ourselves.
Let’s transition now to our first major topic, which is our success quote. Here at EntrepreneurOnFire, we like to start every show off with a little motivation to get that ball kind of rolling and get everybody pumped up for the great content that you have to share with us today. So Elisa, I know that this success quote resonates with you greatly. You have it on a lot of your websites and different things that you do. What do you have for us?
Elisa Doucette: Yes. The quote I have, it’s often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who’s just one of the coolest guys ever, but he actually never wrote it, which is another kind of quirk that I love to this quote. That it’s kind of by an anonymous source. This quote is “to laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child or a garden patch, to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.”
John Lee Dumas: Wow! Well, I’m a little surprised that nobody has stepped up and taken full credit for that, and I’m actually not surprised that Ralph Waldo Emerson allowed other people to give him credit for that because that’s quite an awesome success quote.
Elisa Doucette: [Laughs] I found it when I was about 19 years old, which was just over a way long time ago [Laughs].
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Elisa Doucette: Hence, I’ve kind of had it on my sites. I had a plaque of it made in my home office. It’s something I keep with me kind of as a reminder.
John Lee Dumas: I love it! As a reminder, how do you apply this quote to your everyday life? Obviously, it’s a long, long quote, but give us a specific example of how you have applied at least its meaning to your everyday life.
Elisa Doucette: The biggest thing that I kind of took away from the quote, especially for applying it just to my own life and to my business as well, was that you’re going to find success in life if you focus on making life easier and better and happier for others. It’s kind of that reciprocal mirror thing that if you’re bringing goodness into the world and you’re really pouring that out of yourself, then that’s going to come right back at you, usually tenfold. So if you kind of focus every single day on making sure that one life is breathing easier because you’re in the world, then your success is just going to be manifest.
John Lee Dumas: Okay. I’m going to put you on the spot here just a little bit because EntrepreneurOnFire is about really painting the picture of your life and your journey. So reach in to your memory banks. Give us a really quick example of how you’ve done this in your life.
Elisa Doucette: Well, for me, a big thing was I do this a lot with my clients, and I ended up doing it for myself as well. I created I believe – I can’t think of who calls it. When you’re trying to figure out how you’re going to build your business, you create something called an “avatar,” or an ideal customer. So what I did was I created an ideal customer.
I have a friend that she and I joke because we actually had little pictures of our ideal customer. Hers was a Popsicle stick on the side of her computer monitor. Mine was a Post-It note with a stick figure, which was approximately the height of my artistic talent. It was stuck to the side of my laptop monitor for probably the first like year that I was starting my business. So every time that I was doing anything in business, any time that I was trying to figure out like if something was a good move for me or if this was the direction I wanted to go, I’d be able to look right at that little Post-It figure.
Her name was Angelique, just in case anyone was curious. I kind of almost became friends with Angelique, my little stick figure Post-It girl and would really think about what I was doing to serve her because I had built her to be this actual person in my mind. It was exactly the type of person that I wanted to work with and exactly the type of person I wanted to help. So by really focusing on her to make sure that whatever I was doing was serving her, it really catapulted my business.
John Lee Dumas: That is such good advice. Jason Van Orden of Internet Business Mastery actually gave an entire presentation at BlogWorld on this subject of creating your avatar, really being able to get deep into their minds and really get your niche as small as possible and speak to that avatar because that’s really how you’re going to resonate with your audience, is when you really know who you’re speaking to. So that was a great example of an avatar and how you related to it and how you really were able to succeed by using it.
Elisa Doucette: Yes. Jason was absolutely who I got the phrase “avatar” from, and I’m going to have to beg mass forgiveness from him for not giving him due credit.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Elisa Doucette: He’s now like Ralph Waldo Emerson, just running around with a quote [Laughs].
John Lee Dumas: Well, Ralph Waldo Emerson obviously didn’t have John Dumas from EntrepreneurOnFire cleaning up after him.
Elisa Doucette: [Laughs]
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Elisa Doucette: That’s true. If only he had, what would he have become?
John Lee Dumas: Oh, wonderful thoughts!
Elisa Doucette: [Laughs]
John Lee Dumas: So Elisa, we’re going to transition now into the next topic, and that’s failure because EntrepreneurOnFire is really an insight into your journey as an entrepreneur, and as every entrepreneur, we all face failure at some point in our journey.
We don’t need to define it as failure. We can call it a challenge or an obstacle that needs to be overcome, but however we define it, it’s there, and we don’t let it define us as a person, but we use it to inspire us to move on into different or the same but better directions. Can you take us back to a time where you failed or you came up against an incredible obstacle, and your actions leading up to that?
Elisa Doucette: Oh boy, can I? [Laughs] I actually, in starting my business, I worked for 10 years. I basically went to college for creative writing in classical studies. I got out and started selling life insurance because that’s the obvious career path for a creative writing major.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Elisa Doucette: I basically worked my way up through the company, to the point that I became a sales manager for the state of Maine. So I was working like 60 hours a week, corporate career track, executive offices, really making a name for myself. I realized that I love the work I was doing and I love the company I worked for, but it wasn’t doing it for me. And that really, I was young enough that I needed to take a chance on doing something that mattered to me, rather than following this path.
I left on extremely good terms with the company so that in case I really fell flat on my face and didn’t do well at all, I might be able to go back into this career track that I was on. But I knew if I kept going on the career track, I couldn’t exactly go back to the time in my life when I had so many more available and easy options.
So I started my freelance writing business and editing in about a year. Actually, not even a year. About eight months into running that business as my primary source of income and career and everything else, I hit the proverbial poor writer, rock bottom. My car was repossessed. I had like $4.13 in my checking account. I was living in my sister’s apartment with her and her boyfriend. I was crying like all the time and not sleeping. It was failure of such mass, epic proportions, I would’ve been living in my car had they not repossessed it [Laughs].
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Elisa Doucette: So yes, that’s been the biggest challenge and failure I’ve had, is kind of laying at the bottom of that pit, and then figuring out like what I was going to do to bring myself out of it.
John Lee Dumas: That’s a very vivid picture. Again, to continue this journey, let’s move towards the actions that you took to pull yourself out of that. What was that moment in time that you just felt that there was a click, and you turned and started heading back up that hill towards success?
Elisa Doucette: Well, for me, the kind of catalyst moment was the day that I looked out my back window and saw the tow truck sitting in my driveway [Laughs] to take my car away. That was kind of the realization that this had gotten real and that there was really nowhere. I needed to start making changes.
So what had happened was basically, I had started the freelancing and everything else and I had done what so many writers will do. I was writing SEO articles and I was writing a lot of corporate website copy and press releases, and kind of writing whatever anyone would pay me to do, and I started realizing some success in that.
So I very unintelligently and unstrategically decided to cut all forms of that type of writing because it wasn’t really the type of writing that I enjoyed doing. So I wasn’t doing any of that writing, but I didn’t really have enough of a platform to support myself doing the type of writing that I liked doing. So I kind of had to take a step back and I ended up taking on a lot more of the SEO writing jobs again. I was writing “how to” articles like it was my job.
I ended up doing a lot of sales consulting. I got back in with a couple of insurance agencies. I worked with them doing sales and kind of marketing and consulting for building their business back up since that was a background that I had and a kind of transferable skill that I knew I could utilize to make some quick, easy large amounts of cash to pull myself back up out of the pit and get to the point that I wanted to be at again.
John Lee Dumas: So one thing that I love about these stories and about a very common answer when I have these interviews with entrepreneurs, the question always comes up – what was the one thing that was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur? And the answer is always fear of failure. Obviously, you experienced that failure and you really experienced it to the highest degree where you were in a parking lot, your car was potentially being hooked up by a tow truck to be dragged away, and you described that as as low as you thought you possibly could go.
I really think that people need to realize that yes, everybody’s scared to take that entrepreneurial leap, but when you really truly analyze what’s the worst case scenario that can possibly happen, it’s truly not that bad. You’re not going to die. You’re not going to walk off a cliff into oblivion. You still have your family to support you, you still have your loved ones, you still have a support group that you’ve built throughout your life, and it’s really those people that are going to get you through the low times.
So you just can’t look at failing as an end all/be all. It can just be a bottoming out, and then your rise could potentially be inevitable after that.
Elisa Doucette: That’s definitely true. Failure is – I can’t remember who says it. I think it’s Confucius actually, about that failure is not in falling down, it’s in failing to get back up.
John Lee Dumas: Love it!
Elisa Doucette: So it’s never failure is an endpoint. Failure is not where you stop, or if it is where you stop, then it really is failure.
John Lee Dumas: Love it! Well, we’re going to use that to move into our next topic, and that’s the aha moment. Obviously, the kind of roller coaster that you’ve been on as an entrepreneur, as many entrepreneurs are on, you have light bulb moments over the course of every day, every week, every month. There’s little aha moments that you really just see and they inspire you and they move you forward and you really just get inspired by them in general. Can you tell us about a recent aha moment that you’ve had and how it really did change the way that you do business, and potentially your business and how you perceive life?
Elisa Doucette: I think one of my biggest aha moments in my business scope was I had been blogging and writing online for a while. One day, I did what any self-employed person does. I booted up my computer and checked my email, and I had an email from this woman named Caroline. She claimed that she was from an organization called Forbes. I was vaguely familiar with this organization called Forbes. They have a magazine. They’re kind of a big deal.
She basically sent me an email that was requesting more information from me. She had been following some writing that I had been doing on a site called “Brazen Careerist” for young professionals, and it was right at the beginning of Forbes contributor acquisition model. So they were trying to get more online content that was kind of a little bit different than the general tone and voice of Forbes had been. So they are trying to track some new audience, and one of the ways that Caroline had felt would be a good way to do that would be to write in Forbes Women kind of a perspective from a young professional woman who really didn’t follow a lot of the traditional women’s path. A lot of the traditional women’s scripts that were fed.
So I got the email from her asking me if I would like to have my own column on Forbes.com, to which I immediately wrote back and said, “Are you real?”
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Elisa Doucette: Because I was legitimately convinced the next email was going to involve something like “All we need is your social security number and banking account number. We’ll set you all up, and we promise we’ll start sending you money.” [Laughs]
John Lee Dumas: “And we’ve recently moved to Nigeria, but don’t be concerned.”
Elisa Doucette: Exactly! [Laughs] So she wrote back. She was great. She was like, “Yes. Here’s my information. Here’s my LinkedIn profile. Here’s my byline information on Forbes. You can call Forbes’s switchboard and ask them to transfer you to me, and they will transfer you to me.” So I kind of went back and forth with her for a couple of emails and jumped at the opportunity to be able to kind of write about some of the stuff that I really love writing about, but haven’t found a place to fit it very well with my current writing gigs.
So I got picked up by them and the aha moment kind of really came. Before, I had been kind of playing small ball. Like I had been writing press releases for people and for local businesses, or I had been begging the local newspaper to give me bylines just very on a low level. And to know that someone – like an editor at Forbes.com – was scouring the Internet, which has a few writers poking around on it.
John Lee Dumas: A couple here and there.
Elisa Doucette: [Laughs] Just one or two. And she had found me in this really giant heap of writers and saw something in me that would be worthy of having my own blog on Forbes, it kind of gave me the boost of confidence that I needed to say like, “You know what? I think I can make a go of this. This isn’t just some crazy pie in the sky dream. Other people are seeing this. Other people are believing in me. I might as well start believing in myself and start doing something about it.”
John Lee Dumas: I love it, and this might be it, but I’m still going to ask it anyway.
Elisa Doucette: [Laughs]
John Lee Dumas: Have you had an “I’ve made it” moment?
Elisa Doucette: I’ve been thinking about that. I have I’ve made it moments all the time. I think it stems from being such a huge dork in like my entire growing up life, that I still can’t quite fit my brain around the fact that I might be invited to like the cool kids’ table [Laughs]. It’s actually great for me because I’m constantly happy with my job. I’m constantly in awe of the networking connections I get to make, and I’m constantly challenging myself and striving for the next thing because I just have I’ve made it moments constantly that an email from someone will bring this huge grin to my face.
It goes back I think to that quote of success that I’ve really built my life on, that for me, as soon as I know that I’ve done something good for someone, like that’s an I’ve made it moment for me.
John Lee Dumas: I love that. I really always try to stress to Fire Nation the importance of obviously A, setting goals. But then B, once you do reach those goals, to really sit back and appreciate the journey that you’ve come to to reach that goal and the accomplishments that you’ve made, instead of just immediately pressing forward to that next loftier standard that you’re going to set for yourself because that’s what we do as entrepreneurs. We always raise the bar as we move forward in life, but it’s so important that every step along the way, we’re really taking it all in and breathing and really just enjoying the moment because that’s what life is made up of. It’s made up of the little moments along the journey, and not just its final destination at the end.
Elisa Doucette: That’s totally. I wake up some mornings and I just – from whatever surroundings I happen to be in or wherever I happen to be living or whatever I happen to be doing that day – I’m just grinning that like, I get to do this with my life. There are so many people who don’t get that opportunity and I’m just so happy that I do every day.
John Lee Dumas: Oh, I’ve just heard great things about Maine. Is it really the way life should be?
Elisa Doucette: [Laughs] What I used to tell people when I lived here fulltime was if you’ve ever looked at an LL Bean catalogue, I live there.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Elisa Doucette: [Laughs] So that’s what Maine is. I mean, there’s obviously a lot of other stuff that goes along with it, but for me, Maine has always been running away to a mountain with a notebook or a book, getting out on the coast or sitting in a coffee shop in an old brick building. Portland, Maine is crazy. It’s the largest city in the state and there’s 60,000 people [Laughs].
John Lee Dumas: I love it. I actually live right in the heart of the old port.
Elisa Doucette: Yes!
John Lee Dumas: So I am just seeing the renaissance going around all around me as far as, like you said, these old coffee shops. They used to be industrial warehouses, and now that they’re just beautiful little cool, chic coffee shops, etcetera. I mean a really cool place.
Elisa Doucette: Every time I come back, I love being able to spend as much time as I can out and about in Maine.
John Lee Dumas: So Elisa, we’re going to move on to the next topic, which is your current business. You’re obviously rolling along. You have a lot of things going on, a couple of which I’d like to touch upon because they’re just so inspirational and just really a great way to live one’s life. What’s one thing that’s really exciting you about what you’re doing right now?
Elisa Doucette: One thing that’s really exciting me, I’m getting back into a lot more of the editing work that I used to do before. I am one of those really strange and odd writers that absolutely love doing editing work. I love doing it because I love instead of having to create ideas and words for people, I love being able to work with people on their words and ideas, and kind of take what they’ve put out that’s really, really awesome, and make it even “awesomer.”
It’s just a great feeling for me to know that I’m helping someone else see the potential and the good that they have in something as simple as their website copy, right up to e-books or short stories or things like that, that they get to leave feeling like they didn’t just get sold a bunch of words. They leave feeling like they were really part of the process and that it really is their product.
John Lee Dumas: I love that. We’re going to use that to continue on because the word “entrepreneur” is a mystery to most people because they don’t really know what per se an entrepreneur would be doing during the course of a day, and you’re living that life. Give EntrepreneurOnFire, give us, Fire Nation, a little insight into what your days look like. Obviously, no two days are the same, but you do have common tasks that you’re doing day in and day out. What are those tasks?
Elisa Doucette: Yes. Well, my tasks are kind of split because I do have one extremely large contract that I work with on a regular basis. I work with the guys over at The Tropical MBA and Lifestyle Business Podcast kind of in a managing editor type role. So I spend a lot of my day working with them on different projects that we’re working on, working on their community management for their online forums. I spend a healthy amount of time in my email inboxes [Laughs].
Then the other half of the time, I’m really working on either articles that I need to get out for my own writing. So blogs or sites that I write for or stuff that I’ve pitched, or I spend a lot of time in Google Docs kind of reading through other people’s work and going through with a fine-toothed comb, I guess, doing their grammar edits and doing their idea stretching.
John Lee Dumas: I love Google Docs!
Elisa Doucette: [Laughs] Google Docs is my favorite.
John Lee Dumas: Oh, it’s so fun and it’s so great. With virtual assistants or what have you, it’s just a great way to share ideas quickly and to collaborate. It’s just incredible.
Elisa Doucette: That’s the number one word right there. If you’re going to be collaborating with people, Google Docs is a great, great easy tool to use. I know that there’s a lot of tools that will do collaboration, but they are way too advanced for me [Laughs].
John Lee Dumas: Simple yet incredible.
Elisa Doucette: Yes.
John Lee Dumas: So Elisa, what’s the vision that you have for your future?
Elisa Doucette: I’m a very – I guess you could say simple person. I don’t think that that’s necessarily the best. I have a friend that I said that to once. I said, “Chris, I’m just a simple girl.” He wrote back and he’s like, “That made me laugh.”
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Elisa Doucette: [Laughs] But I try not to focus as much on the future because I feel like it sets you up. Having been kind of where I’ve been on my path, if I get too far ahead of myself, I feel like I forget where I am in the here and now and kind of plates start falling.
In the future, I want to be able to keep traveling. I currently am home visiting family right now, but regularly I live on different parts of the planet. I want to be able to keep working with entrepreneurs to help them grow their businesses. I love working with writers and authors to be able to help them bring their writing to the next level and really become the best version of their writing selves. I just like making the world a happier, better place. So as long as I get to keep doing that, that’s a perfect future for me.
John Lee Dumas: That’s great! I would’ve also accepted one big question mark.
Elisa Doucette: [Laughs]
John Lee Dumas: So Elisa, we’ve now reached my favorite part of the show. We’re about to enter the Lightning Round. This is where I provide you with a series of questions and you come back at Fire Nation with amazing and mind-blowing answers. Does that sound like a plan?
Elisa Doucette: [Laughs] That sounds great.
John Lee Dumas: Awesome! So we’ve already touched on this first one. At least I have. But I would love to get your take on this. What was the number one thing that was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur?
Elisa Doucette: The number one thing that was holding me back was the loss of security and stability that I felt that I was going to – and obviously did – encounter from becoming an entrepreneur, but I figured out that once you lose it, security and stability, you can get them back. It’s not easy, but you can get them back.
John Lee Dumas: What’s the best business advice you ever received?
Elisa Doucette: The best business advice I ever received? Probably from my boss at the sales agency. The second insurance sales agency I used to work at. She became one of my mentors, one of my best friends. We used to have a phrase frequently that was “it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.” [Laughs]
John Lee Dumas: Oh, I use that in the army all the time! As a platoon leader, I was always asking for forgiveness.
Elisa Doucette: It’s kind of one of those, and I think that entrepreneurs are well-served to keep it in the back of their minds. It really is so much easier and you can get much more accomplished than when you just ask for forgiveness if you do something wrong rather than permission to try something different and brazen because different and brazen scares people, so they say no, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing. As long as you’re willing to own up to it when you do something wrong, that proves your integrity.
John Lee Dumas: I love it. I always stress, take powerful action. If you’re always worried about how that action is going to result, then you’re not going to be powerful about it. So I’m a big believer in that as well.
Elisa Doucette: Yes.
John Lee Dumas: What is something that’s working for you right now?
Elisa Doucette: I have to say something that works for me – and I know that it is such a cliché to answer – but something that really works for me is networking through social media and online forums and different online platforms because I do travel so much. Then previously when I was trying to build my career from Maine, in which I think that there’s maybe like seven national bloggers who live in the state of Maine – the entire state.
John Lee Dumas: Chris Brogan being one of them.
Elisa Doucette: Yes, yes. From Lewiston. I think that I learned very quickly that I was going to have to make my networking connections and kind of build my business by really connecting with people online. So for me, it’s really important to make sure that I’m replying to every tweet that I get and that I’m interacting with every person who sends me an email and really going into forums and offering good advice and asking for good advice in return. I find that the more I do that kind of stuff, the more it builds my audience and the greater connections I have.
John Lee Dumas: So we’ve already mentioned Google Docs, and I simply love that Internet resource. Do you have another Internet resource that you are just in love with like a Google Docs, like an Evernote that you could suggest to Fire Nation?
Elisa Doucette: I use LastPass. LastPass is a password saving vault. So basically, I think you pay like $15.00 a year and it stores all of your passwords kind of to the cloud in this encrypted vault. For my particular vault, you need to enter information off of a grid that I have printed and hidden in my computer bag.
So really, no one can break into my computer and get the passwords, but I can get to any sites online with one quick keystroke instead of constantly having to remember what my passwords are or having them saved in my browser, which is really scary when you travel all the time because if someone figures out how to get into your computer and you have all of your passwords saved in your auto fills on your browser, someone now has your information on your bank account and is sending it to a Nigerian prince.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs] It’s great too. I love and use LastPass. Then just the speed that you can go from one website to the other is incredible and it’s just a great tool. Thank you for that.
Elisa Doucette: Yes.
John Lee Dumas: What’s the best book or business book that you’ve read in the last six months?
Elisa Doucette: I’m not sure if it’s the best book. It’s the book that made me think the most, or cause probably the greatest reaction in me – and I’m sure you’ve had a couple of people who’ve brought it up – Ryan Holiday’s “Trust Me, I’m Lying.”
John Lee Dumas: Yes. We actually had him on the show as well. He was great.
Elisa Doucette: I don’t know Ryan at all, unfortunately, but I had this extremely visceral reaction within myself because similar to Ryan, I live both on the kind of online editorial/journalistic side where I’m writing for Forbes and writing for websites and I’m the one who’s getting shysted by these shysters all the time.
John Lee Dumas: Right.
Elisa Doucette: But on the flipside, I work as an editor for a very prominent online brand and I’m trying to shyst people all the time [Laughs].
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Elisa Doucette: So suddenly, that book really made it clear to me the internal conflict that I was going through [Laughs].
John Lee Dumas: Love it! I will link that book up in the show notes with an asterisk that it’s not the best business book that you’ve read in the last six months, but it is a controversial book.
Elisa Doucette: It absolutely is. I feel if something is able to cause controversy in you, then it’s got to be something that’s worth passing along to some other people.
John Lee Dumas: So Elisa, this last question is my favorite. It’s kind of a tricky one so take your time. You can digest it, and then come back at us with an answer.
If you woke up tomorrow morning and you still had all the experience, knowledge and money that you currently have today, but everything about your business had completely disappeared, forcing you to start with a clean slate, which is a situation that many of the listeners of Fire Nation find themselves in, what would you do?
Elisa Doucette: I would get a website up so that I could get writing out on the Internet again. If I had seven days, I’d probably pitch 20 to 25 different magazines and editors to see if I could get some articles in with them. I would social network my face off [Laughs].
John Lee Dumas: Yes.
Elisa Doucette: On Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook. I would be answering so many questions on Quora, they would possibly ban me.
John Lee Dumas: [Laughs]
Elisa Doucette: [Laughs] Yes. I might if I had the means – and by means I mean lots of coffee – try to get some sort of really substantial, useful, downloadable e-book up and out that could get sent out to people that I would most likely offer as free content to get people kind of coming to my site and learning a little bit more about me, and figuring out if we’d be a good fit to work together on different projects.
John Lee Dumas: Well, that’s a great start. Elisa, you’ve given us some great actionable advice this entire interview, and we are all better for it here at Fire Nation. So listen, give us one parting piece of guidance, then give yourself a plug, and then we’ll say goodbye.
Elisa Doucette: My one parting piece of guidance would be things are never as bad as they seem, and as long as you work to make the world a better place, the world will become a better place for you. So if anyone wants to check me out, probably the easiest way to find me quick is on Twitter. As I’ve mentioned a few times, I am in love with the little blue tweety bird. My handle there is @elisadoucette. You can also check me out at my website, which is elisadoucette.com.
John Lee Dumas: Wonderful! I will link all those up in the show notes. Again, thank you so much Elisa from Fire Nation. We salute you, and we’ll catch you on the flipside.
Elisa Doucette: Cheers! Have a good one.
