Ela Staniak Leaupepe was born in Poland, and her challenging upbringing was a speed lesson in life. At 21, she moved to Australia and began working first in the fitness industry before embarking on a journey through online and corporate coaching. She studied Fitness, Sports Coaching, Neurolinguistic Programming, Hypnotherapy, Public Speaking, Intuitive Coaching, and attended countless professional development events.
Ela is the Founder and CEO of Feminine Leaders–which creates a pathway for women to rise and find their place as true leaders. Ela partners with CEOs, Executives & Business Owners to produce high caliber business results and access their creative genius.
“Always have multiple lead generation platforms to serve your network and clientele.”
Ela Staniak Leaupepe
Worst investment ever
Ela had, for the longest time, wanted to expand her fitness career into something bigger that could empower women all over the world. She took the bold step to learn about business coaching and hired a coach.
Finding her sweet spot
Ela invested over $100,000 in various personal development programs and business coaching programs. She also invested about $10,000 in Facebook marketing and used it as her primary lead generation platform.
Finally, this year, she found her sweet spot in the business and had a formidable social media presence on Facebook. Ela had created a name for herself and was now the go-to person for women empowerment, weight loss, and hypnotherapy.
Rug pulled out from under her
Unfortunately for Ela, the sweet spot didn’t last very long. In June this year, Ela woke up one morning and found an email notifying her of suspicious login activity on her Facebook account and was asked to verify her identity. That verification was rejected, and her accounts got deleted entirely and disabled.
Ela had 5,000 connections on her personal profile, nearly 11,000 connections on her business page, and almost 6,000 connections on Instagram. She was also running two different Facebook groups; one of them had 1,600 women in there.
Shock, disbelief, and denial
At first, Ela went into shock, disbelief, and complete denial. She convinced herself that there must be a way to get her accounts back. She hadn’t done anything wrong anyway.
Ela tried to contact Facebook several times, pleading her case. She eventually heard back from Facebook but not with the kind of news she was hoping for. Ela was informed that the decision to close her Facebook accounts had been reviewed and that her application to have the decision reversed had been rejected.
She couldn’t believe that all the years of work, sleepless nights, 18 hour days, moments of tears, moments of giving up, and continuously pursuing and persisting in building her business on Facebook and Instagram had gone down the drain.
One too few
Unfortunately, other than her email list Ela did not have any other lead generation platform, so she had to rebuild her audience from scratch. While running her business on Facebook and Instagram alone had been fruitful for a moment, it turned out to be her worst investment ever because she abandoned other platforms, and now she had nothing to work with.
Lessons learned
Have multiple lead generation platforms
When you are creating a business, have multiple lead generation platforms that you can use to serve your network and your clientele. This ensures that you still have a soft spot to fall onto should any of the platforms fail.
Be flexible and adaptable
If you want to run a business or organization or be in a managerial position, practice flexibility and adaptation. Challenges, whether it’s in business or personal life, never end. So always be flexible enough to adapt to change.
Andrew’s takeaways
Embrace change
When things are falling apart, acknowledge that change is inevitable and embrace it. Find new ways to make the change work.
Be more of yourself instead of copying others
Try to be more of yourself. Find your place on this earth, know where you’re supposed to be and be happy to be there.
The four drivers of a company’s value
Four things drive the value of a company; one, revenue, increase it. Two, expense, decrease it. Three assets, increase them or get more out of the existing assets that you have. Four, risk, reduce it.
Actionable advice
Expand your thinking and your consciousness. Use multiple platforms to provide your network and clients access to whatever you offer. If one platform is taken away from you or stops working, you’ll have other safety nets to continue serving your clients and networks, and that will ultimately put you in the center.
No. 1 goal for the next 12 months
Ela’s goal for the next 12 months is to launch her biggest women empowerment event ever. She hopes the world will have overcome COVID-19. Her goal is to provide an amazing transformational experience for women to come in and experience the feeling of letting go and making peace with the past, experiencing the now, and creating the future.
Parting words
“You are the one and only CEO of your life. So take your life by the horns and ride it.”
Ela Staniak Leaupepe
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