We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alexa Carlin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alexa, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Has Covid resulted in any major changes to your business model?

Before the pandemic my company, Women Empower X, was solely an event business. We hosted large conferences in select cities attracting 2-3,000 women per event. Once the pandemic hit we had to make a huge pivot because our business model was no longer feasible. While we hosted 2 virtual conferences we saw a bigger opportunity to pivot our entire model from an event business to an educational platform for women entrepreneurs, authors, and creators. Today, we help women grow their business and brand by providing the right tools, education and support through our courses, publishing division and community. We focus on empowering women to grow using their authentic voice across all platforms. While we do plan on bringing back our well-known conference in the near future, we do not plan on shifting back to being an event company but instead host our events solely as a way to connect with our community on a deeper level.

Alexa, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Since I can remember it has been my mission to make a difference in at least one person’s life a day. I started my first business when I was just 17 years old, designing jewelry under my own label for an L.A. based fashion company backed by Jennifer Anniston and Courtney Cox. I worked with them to use fashion as a way to raise money to build schools in Africa, using education as a vehicle to make villages self-sustainable. From there, I started a blog in college called Hello Perfect focused on instilling confidence in girls and young women. Through this blog I started to learn more about social media and really using your authentic voice to grow your brand. I was able to get a number of successful celebrities to join in on our movement to instill confidence such as Mark Cuban, Shaq, Rebecca Minkoff, Steve Madden, and Marc Jacobs among others. I was growing this blog in college and excited to continue expanding after I graduated, yet a few months before college graduation, I contracted a deadly bacteria that got into my bloodstream and sent my body into septic shock. At 21 years old I was induced into a medical coma given a 1% chance to live. This changed my life forever as shortly after I survived sepsis, I was diagnosed with a debilitating autoimmune disease. It has been through these struggles that I found the opportunity through the obstacle to share my story as a public speaker, author and founded my current venture, Women Empower X. These experiences also led me to a publishing deal to share the hard lessons learned in my new book, Adaptable.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

There is a ton of noise online and it’s getting harder and harder to rise above the noise and stand out in your industry solely from social media. We are also seeing how more entrepreneurs are getting burnt out from social media and keeping up with a consistent posting schedule yet we know how imperative it is in order to grow. So what can we do without spending tons of money on social media advertising to try and grow? I’ve discovered one key skill to growing a large and loyal following online and that is public speaking. Speaking authentically using your voice is the key way to rise above the noise online. The more you speak, both in-person on stages and on virtual platforms the more your audience will get to know, like and trust you therefore leading to following you online but better yet, sharing your brand with their peers. I’ve been able to grow my online following solely through public speaking and word of mouth. It is by far the best way to grow your business and brand and the most powerful marketing vehicle. So if you’re just getting started my advice is to determine your niche and target audience, pick a topic you’re passionate about, and turn on your camera and start speaking! To go a step further, go live on a platform as live streaming is one of the most effective ways to become a better public speaker and to connect with your audience on a deeper level, which leads to them becoming loyal brand followers of yours for life.

Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?

I’m a big believer that in order to build wealth you must have multiple revenue streams so I have implemented that in my personal life as well as my business model. I also make sure that not all of my revenue streams are predicated on someone else saying ‘yes’ to me, so I always have control over my finances and future.

When I first started as an event company, I realized early on if a company who sponsored my event decided they didn’t want to sponsor anymore, that would be a huge financial obstacle as we relied on big sponsors in order to fund events and pay our team. I never wanted to leave my career in the hands of someone else so I began to diversify my income.

Same thing for today, I never want to rely just on influencer deals as my sole revenue because what if brands decide to go a different direction or i’m no longer what they are looking for? So today, we have multiple revenue streams such as revenue coming in from public speaking gigs, our courses, membership, brand partnerships, and books.

Always, always, always make sure 50% or more of your revenue is something you can control. An example of this is creating a course or becoming a coach, if your course or programs aren’t selling you have the power to pivot and adapt your model to try something new for it to sell better. When you rely solely on someone (like a big company or client) saying yes or no to you which maybe determined by outside forces you can’t control (like the corporation is moving funds elsewhere, their business goes out of business, the don’t have the money, they are changing directions, etc.) then you are leaving your future in the hands of someone else and in order to be confident in your growth, you must never do that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.alexacarlin.com/
• Instagram: instagram.com/alexarosecarlin
• Facebook: alexarosecarlin
• Linkedin: /alexarosecarlin
• Twitter: alexarosecarlin
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/c/AlexaRoseCarlin
• Other: https://www.womenempowerx.com/ TikTok – AlexaRoseCarlin

Image Credits
Debra Gloria Photography