Healer Q&A: Crafting a soulful elevator pitch with Brynn Scarborough
The following interview is a transcript excerpt from The Heallist Podcast episode. Listen to the full audio version below and subscribe to get notified of new episodes.
In this illuminating conversation with Brynn Scarborough, founder of Alchemy Leadership Lab, we unpack the art of crafting a soulful elevator pitch that feels authentic while effectively communicating the transformation you offer. Through live role-playing scenarios, we demonstrate the difference between responses that fall flat and those that spark genuine interest and connection.
Brynn reveals how women especially tend to undermine their own messaging with questioning tonalities and tentative language, offering practical frameworks to speak confidently about your work without the "ick factor" that comes with traditional pitching. You'll learn how to position yourself as an expert at the intersection of your various modalities rather than feeling obligated to list every credential.
Defining Your Specialty in the Holistic Space
Brynn Scarborough: There's a lot of us who are dabbling in multiple modalities, and if I was trying to list off all of those things for an individual to help them understand what I'm doing, we would just be lost in the sauce. So we hold back sometimes from using the true terminology, which is I'm an expert at the intersection of personal development and business development, or I'm an expert at this intersectional space between soul-led healing and personal growth. I do that with a lot of different modalities that I've learned throughout the years. So we hold back, in some of the terminology that would help us express exactly our positioning, which is expertise, which is being an authority, bringing years of experience to the table, because we're trying to over-explain ourselves so often. We're trying to over-explain and over-validate ourselves instead of just standing strong in a position.
This is also a uniquely female issue that we deal with as well, because we're constantly trying to justify our seat at the table by explaining all of our credentials and all of the reasons why we deserve to be there, instead of being very clear about who we are and what we do. This problem is not reserved for holistic practitioners or solopreneurs – this happens in the CEO space all the way through the executive pipeline, every type of business, every type of human, because we are not just one thing. And career development now is taking a huge turn towards this portfolio space where we might have three or four major buckets open at any one time. It's choosing which bucket to lead with, but also really doing some self-reflection about where you stand in those spaces. Sometimes we don't really want to write those strong “I am” statements about ourselves, and walking through that process, especially in a journal or something like that, can be really useful to help move this process forward in a soul-led way. Not in a sales pitch way, but in a soul-led way.
And let there be a pause, because I've done it so many times and I have overshared, I have over-explained myself, especially when you're walking into something new or you're in a new room or around new people, validating your position there and I think we all do it instead of letting the truth hang off.
Converting Client Interest to Action
Brynn Scarborough: Having the boldness and the confidence in what you offer to make the ask, which is to move on the energy that's present, “strike while the iron's hot” in the sales world, when, in reality, if there's an energy about what you're doing, you want to capture the momentum of that energy and that's part of your work, especially in this holistic space, is to be able to respond when there's an energetic cue towards something, and so, making that easy. Put a bundle package together that you can sell that day so that when people meet you and they are energetically responding to what you have to offer, they can make a move. Don't give us too much time to think about it or deprioritize it in our minds. Make sure that we can move on that energy.
A really actionable takeaway would be two things: one, to journal about, let’s say, three of your ideal customers. Who are those people? What do they do? Which avatar is really not close enough, but in the past, when you were building, working with suburban housewives. What is your mission-driven group that you're called to? And think about who those top three people are and write it out in detail. Who are those people? What do they do? How do they spend their time? What's important to them? What are they stressed out about? And then it might become a lot easier to fashion three statements about how you position yourself with those individuals.
Write it out, practice it, say it out loud so that you get through the things that don't make sense before you're in front of someone and that doesn't sound very soul-led. But the reality is, the practice of this terminology and the practice and visualization of the conversation is really an incredibly important part of making it flow and getting your energy across successfully.
Embracing Career Transitions Authentically
Brynn Scarborough: The goal is to elevate each other's voices and it's to align personal and professional development and to do business very intentionally together. Sometimes men are a little bit better at showing up at the golf course and walking away with a business deal. We want to be intentional and forthright about the fact that we are interested in getting business done. We are interested in supporting each other's endeavors and also supporting each other personally, because I don't believe those two things are separated. I'm always very grateful for anyone who's along at this stage of the journey, because this response to energy and response to the opportunity that's in front of us while the platform is being developed behind the scenes, but it's really a truly beautiful space and container that has already developed.
I want other people next to me while I'm going through this process and unless I'm honest about the process, I can't have that. If I wait to stand up this perfect “platform” after it's ready and surprise the public with it, then I lose all of this build momentum. That's happening along the way when I open myself up authentically.
The challenge is to stay in the authenticity of that transition, it’s to not try to button it up and make it look too pretty, not try to over-explain it, to be able to say part of my statement is I'm in the middle of a career transition and working up to the confidence to say that out loud took a few months. I'm not gonna pretend like I woke up one day and this is all gonna be fine, there's nothing to worry about. That's not real. The challenge is really to stay authentic in that space, and you don't have to make a choice between saying boldly who you are and what you need and inviting someone into your gifts and being authentic and showing up as your real self.
Finding Your Champions During Transition
Brynn Scarborough: Those early champions, the cluster that's come alongside me, that I didn't have six months ago, that I have today because I shared very authentically about where I was and where I had planned to go, and those early champions are really the key to momentum. You don't have to convert 200 clients. You need 12 committed ones, because not to say that women do everything great, but women are champions of things they care about. They are loyal and they will invite you into their space. They're includers. They want all their friends to know about something great. When they find out what that is whether that's the sale, whether that's the product, whatever it is we invite people into that. We want everybody to know, and so that's a really powerful thing to bring alongside you. But people can't become your champion again if they don't know where you're at and they don't know how to help you.
