We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chellie Phillips. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chellie below.

Chellie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

I’ve been blessed to have mostly good bosses during my career. However, I had one who changed my total outlook on the impact one person can have on the culture of an organization. I had worked for a company for over 20 years and until a leadership transition, would have told you I’d have retired there. One person changed the feel of the whole organization and made me question my skills and abilities and wonder if the work I did mattered. That shouldn’t have been the case because I had a bookcase full of state and national awards recognizing the work I did in our industry. Yet, feeling unvalued each day and disrespected took it’s toll. In fact, one evening, I received an email from our new manager asking if my skills had come from a box of cereal (like the prize inside I used to fight over with my brother when we were growing up). This was the kick in the pants I needed to cause me to make a change. So now, I work with professional on branding themselves for the right career opportunities and I work with companies to create people-centered cultures.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

It’s about becoming irresistible… An irresistible brand is what you need whether you’re looking to land the perfect job or attract the most talented employees. I’m a a sweet-tea sipping, sassy Southerner, who is passionate about helping career minded individuals and companies become irresistible. Whether you’re looking to land your next job or attract the most talented employees, creating an irresistible value-based brand is the key. Chellie is a speaker, coach, trainer, podcaster and an award winning author. Her books include When In Doubt, Delete It!, Get Noticed, Get Hired, and Culture Secrets (publishing in April 2023).

Using my Successfully Ever After Formula, I help professionals position themselves for their next best career move by creating an irresistible personal brand designed to get them noticed for all the right reasons. It’s all about creating intentional visibility. Using my V.A.L.U.E. Culture Secrets, I help business leaders create cultures where both the employees and business thrive. Using my value and vision based strategies, companies can increase job satisfaction, grow engagement, and retain (or hire) top talent in line with their mission and purpose. The single most important thing that has contributed to my success as a coach comes from my years of corporate communications and marketing experience. Everyone, and every company, has a story. It’s up to me to help my clients tell that story so they attract the right opportunities or employees.

I became passionate about workplace/organizational culture and the importance of finding a career path that celebrates your unique skills and gifts after volunteering for over 14 years on a college campus as an advisor for a national sorority. I saw numerous women cross a stage and receive their diploma only to struggle to find work in their chosen field. Then when they did receive an offer several months later after they had been working in what I call “get-by-jobs” , the offers they received were thousands less than those who received offers right out of college. What this means is they would stay behind as long as they worked there because each raise you receive is based on the current salary you are making. This was driven home even more when one of the women faced the aftermath of a suicide of a parent. She immediately became responsible for making ends meet, finishing college and being able to support herself and a brother financially. It was during this time I put my marketing skills to work and decided if you can brand products and promote them, we can promote ourselves and attract better work opportunities where our skills are valued and compensated appropriately.

Since that time, I’ve learned more about professional development and the role culture plays in the workplace and have devoted more time to making sure the place we spend almost 90,000 hours in our lifetime is one where we feel appreciated and valued. It’s also a space where we grow and develop. This thought process led me to create an internal professional development program that is now being replicated in other utilities across the U.S.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Mindset is a huge part of the success journey. A few years ago, I succumbed to peer pressure and signed up to do a half marathon. Now keep in mind, before that, I’d never done more than a 5K (and never ran a full race). But a group of friends thought the experience of training and the trip would be a great adventure. So I signed up. I’m not athletic. I’m overweight. I don’t like to sweat. But I am keen on improving myself and I love my group of fearless females. I started the training. I sucked. But I kept going. When you registered for the half, you had to input a length of time it would take you to compete the run. When I did the match (based on those 5K times) I wasn’t going to meet the 4 hour window you had to complete the 13 miles in for it to count. Well that’s unacceptable. If I’m doing it I better get the t-shirt! So I put my finishing time as 3:55:55.

We reached the part in our training where we had a long run – 7 miles. That would be the most miles I’d ever done. I cried on the way to that meet up. I was so in my head that I couldn’t do it. That I’d slow everyone else down. That I didn’t belong in this group. We hit the road and every so often, I’d catch up with one of our group, who had slowed down to catch their breath or tie a shoe – or so they said. They knew I didn’t want them waiting on me, so they took turns falling back and supporting me in a way that let me know I wasn’t alone, but also respected my feelings to.

I made that 7 miles and I cried again on the way home. Why? Because I realized that I had covered half the distance of the race and I’d done it in a time that if you doubled would allow me to finish under the time limit. In my head, as I trained, with each footfall, I would say to myself – Strong enough, Fast enough. I wrote it on my mirror with a new time goal so I saw it ever morning when I was getting ready for work and every night when I was getting ready for bed. I had it stuck on a sticky note on my computer so I thought about it during the day. It became my manta.

On race day, we joined 30,000 of our closest friends at the starting line. We got the signal to go and everyone took off. One person in our group stayed with me. She had run several halfs and she said her goal was to get me through my first one.

As each mile passed she would continue to encourage me. She’d let me talk short walking breaks to catch my breath, but then she’d urge me to run again. She kept me focused on the finish and not on what might hurt at the moment.

I finished that race in 3:26:33 which was faster than my goal. This accomplishment taught me two very important things. First, who you surround yourself is crucial to your success. And secondly, when you beat an impossible – or something your mind tells you you can’t do or that will be a struggle – I think it reframes your thinking. I think it opens you up to being able to accomplish so much more. Knowing you overcame one obstacles and even surpassing your original goal, gives you the courage to go for more.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

For me the keys to building my audience on social media are two things – consistency and authenticity. I had a very smart business coach who I worked with when I started that would keep sending back my funnel copy because he said I didn’t have enough me in there. He said people want to know who they are buying from and why they should trust you. That was hard for me because I’d been told all my life, it’s not nice to talk about yourself. I had to flip the way I thought about sharing my experience and accomplishments so that people could see the skill and expertise they were tapping into.

Growing your audience on social media takes time. It’s like any relationship. You’ve got to get to know each other. So I use a mix of personal and professional posts. I share branded quotes that reflect my personality and what matters to me. I share my blog posts on the same day each week. I share events where I speak and I do a lot of behind the scenes photos if I don’t have stage pics to share. Then I share out content from my podcast guesting episodes. This helps me establish credibility because my audience can see someone viewed me as an expert in this field and asked my opinion. Once you determine your message, put it out there consistently. Remember, only about 5% of the people will see your message at any one time, So sharing repeats of material, thoughts, and on different platforms is ok. You aren’t going to overload anyone with your posts.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.chelliephillips.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chellie_phillips/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chelliep
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chellie_phillips
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_chellie
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@chellie_phillips