Elise Armitage Of ‘What The Fab Podcast’: Second Chapters; How I Reinvented Myself In The Second Chapter Of My Life
An Interview With Pirie Jones Grossman
Hire slow, fire fast. Especially when you’re shifting from a one woman show to growing your organization — when you’re a small business, if someone isn’t the right fit it throws everything off and stresses you out.
Many successful people reinvented themselves in a later period in their lives. Jeff Bezos worked in Wall Street before he reinvented himself and started Amazon. Sara Blakely sold office supplies before she started Spanx. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was a WWE wrestler before he became a successful actor and filmmaker. Arnold Schwarzenegger went from a bodybuilder, to an actor to a Governor. McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc was a milkshake-device salesman before starting the McDonalds franchise in his 50's.
How does one reinvent themselves? What hurdles have to be overcome to take life in a new direction? How do you overcome those challenges? How do you ignore the naysayers? How do you push through the paralyzing fear?
In this series called “Second Chapters; How I Reinvented Myself In The Second Chapter Of My Life “ we are interviewing successful people who reinvented themselves in a second chapter in life, to share their story and help empower others.
As a part of this interview series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Elise Armitage.
Elise Armitage is a content creator and founder behind What The Fab, a travel, fashion, and lifestyle blog that shares inspiration with a pinch of zest served with a side of real talk.
She started the brand back in 2012, and since then has turned a part-time gig into a full-blown business. At the beginning of 2019, Elise left her corporate job at Google to chase her dreams: being an entrepreneur and helping her audience find fabulous in the everyday.
In Jan 2021, Elise launched the What The Fab Podcast. The podcast was a happy hour with a girlfriend where you can gossip, you can dish, you can share your latest skincare finds, but you can also share advice and tangible tips on things like career or tricky situations at work, maybe life hacks She mentioned the reason being was due to the amount of DMs she received on her Instagram, asking for advice in regards to lifestyle, travel, and becoming a blogger.
Elise believes that there are a ton of blogs out there, but there isn’t a blog written by you with your unique voice, your unique story, your perspective. And there are people out there that need to hear that messaging from you, because, for whatever reason, it’s going to hit them versus somebody else saying it, maybe it’s because of your story, maybe it’s because they relate to something specific about you.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we start, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
I’m a born and raised Californian, from a small town near Sacramento. I’ve always loved storytelling through writing and photos.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Never settle — in love, in your career, in your life. I think that life is short and ever since I was a kid I knew I wanted to make sure I didn’t have a mediocre life. When friends would date guys in high school that they admitted they were settling for, I never understood that. When you settle, it doesn’t leave room for you to make sense for something greater.
You have been blessed with much success. In your opinion, what are the top three qualities that you possess that have helped you accomplish so much? If you can, please share a story or example for each.
Drive — I’ve always been a hard worker, but when I combined my passion for my own business with my drive, my work ethic knew no limits.
Discipline — I worked on my blog as my side hustle for 6.5 years before I turned it into my full time business. That meant spending my nights and weekends working on my blog, and saying no to spontaneous happy hours after work.
Consistency — I just kept showing up and doing the thing. If you haven’t read Atomic Habits, I highly recommend it. Having consistent habits compounds over time to epic results, even though it may look boring day to day.
Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about ‘Second Chapters’. Can you tell our readers about your career experience before your Second Chapter?
I worked at Google for over five years doing branding and events.
And how did you “reinvent yourself” in your Second Chapter?
In January 2019, I left Google to run my blog What The Fab full time.
Can you tell us about the specific trigger that made you decide that you were going to “take the plunge” and make your huge transition?
I had been running my blog as a side hustle for years, and always wondered in the back of my mind if I’d ever be able to turn it into my full time gig. Eventually, I just knew that if I didn’t try running my blog as my business I’d regret it forever. So I put in my 2 weeks at Google and took the plunge!
What did you do to discover that you had a new skillset inside of you that you haven’t been maximizing? How did you find that and how did you ultimately overcome the barriers to help manifest those powers?
Sometimes when you work at a big corporation, you might have a great idea but can’t implement it because of red tape, not getting the needed approvals, etc. For me, some of the frustrations and inefficiencies helped nudge me towards the realization that I was meant to work for myself.
How are things going with this new initiative? We would love to hear some specific examples or stories.
Things have been going great! I hit the ground running as soon as I left Google and have been busy with brand collaborations, growing my website’s traffic, launching a podcast, launching my Lightroom presets…and more on the horizon!
Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Definitely my husband, Omied. We had a lot of conversations around what it would mean to leave my cushy Google salary behind. He was so supportive and was willing to make some lifestyle changes if needed while I got my business off the ground.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started in this new direction?
I was so nervous about leaving behind my comfortable Google salary, but the ironic thing is my business brings in more revenue than my old salary made me. If I had let the fear of leaving Google hold me back, I would have missed out on so much!
Did you ever struggle with believing in yourself? If so, how did you overcome that limiting belief about yourself? Can you share a story or example?
Of course! Self doubt definitely starts to creep in sometimes. But action is the antidote to fear — any time I struggle with believing in myself I just put one foot in front of the other and start taking action one thing at a time. It always boosts my confidence and gets my juices going.
In my own work I usually encourage my clients to ask for support before they embark on something new. How did you create your support system before you moved to your new chapter?
I made several close friends who were blogging full time or running their own businesses. They were super supportive and cheered me on as I made the leap. Not only did they encourage me, but we were all super open with each other with sharing finances, how much we were charging brands, revenue streams, etc.
Starting a new chapter usually means getting out of your comfort zone, how did you do that? Can you share a story or example of that?
This was definitely outside of my comfort zone, but I just reminded myself that if I didn’t try this, I’d regret it forever. I also did an exercise where I journaled on the prompt “What’s the absolute worst thing you’re afraid could happen?” and then “What would you do if this happened?” I was most afraid of not making any money and my business not making it. And I realized if that happened, I could always get another job. Suddenly, my fears and getting outside of my comfort zone weren’t as scary.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me before I started leading my organization” and why? Please share a story or example for each.
- Hire slow, fire fast. Especially when you’re shifting from a one woman show to growing your organization — when you’re a small business, if someone isn’t the right fit it throws everything off and stresses you out.
- I can do anything, but I can’t do everything. Sometimes I’m still guilty of this, but I can pile a lot of things onto my plate at once. Focusing down on doing one thing well before moving on to the next has been helpful.
- Money is energy. It’s an energetic exchange. We all have mindset hangups around money and how we interact with it. The sooner you figure out what yours are, the sooner you can be cognizant of them and how they affect your daily life and how you run your business.
- No is a complete sentence. Saying no to things that might seem like an exciting opportunity but don’t completely align with my goals has been essential, and I wish I started doing it earlier.
- Everyone faces self doubt and fear. Even the most successful people and entrepreneurs. They just feel the fear and do it anyways.
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?
I think the world would be a better place if everyone picked one cause they were passionate about and they regularly donated and volunteered to help that cause.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment 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 if we tag them. :-)
Michelle Obama ;)
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can find my blog What The Fab at www.whatthefab.com and I’m on Insta @wtfab.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much, and we wish you only continued success.
