We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alyssa Anne Austin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alyssa below.
Hi Alyssa, thank you for being such a positive, uplifting person. We’ve noticed that so many of the successful folks we’ve had the good fortune of connecting with have high levels of optimism and so we’d love to hear about your optimism and where you think it comes from.
That’s funny you should say that because one of the words that I hear most often from peers and colleagues when asked how they would describe me is “positive” (or synonyms like “optimistic” or “bright”, or even “bubbly” – which I love!). Being optimistic is not something that I necessarily strive to do, but I think it’s just part of my inherent worldview. In terms of where this came from, the first place I’d credit is my upbringing. If you ever meet my mom you’ll notice right away that she’s basically a ray of human sunshine. She’s one of the kindest, most altruistic, and most fun people that I know, so I think a lot of her sunshine just kind of spilled over to me as a child.
Gratitude also plays a big role in this outlook for me – choosing to be grateful and thankful for the blessings in my life helps cultivate a lot of the optimism I have. I think it’s so easy to be negative, so easy to expect the worst, or have a bad attitude. And that actually is one of my biggest pet peeves if I’m being honest: people who are overly negative. Because there’s just no need for that, you know? Things are easier and life is better when you choose to see the best in it.
I’ve been pretty blessed in my life so far with some incredible foundational experiences and relationships and I acknowledge that. I’ve also dealt with my fair share of really difficult things. But in the end it’s just so much easier to choose to be positive. To believe that great things are going to happen for you. And the funny thing is, I’ve found that when you do believe that great things are going to happen to you, that tends to be what happens – it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I am a multi-hyphenate professional – I am an Actor, Author, Speaker, Career Coach, and Personal Branding Strategist. I know people have a lot of opinions on the idea of being “multi-hyphenate,” but there’s no other way to authentically describe myself, and I fully embrace the idea that you can be more than one thing.
My love for acting and performing started early. I started dance class when I was just 3 years old and danced competitively through college (I was on the Penn State Lionettes Dance Team – one of the best experiences of my life!) When I was younger, I also slowly started to get into singing and performing, and even doing some on-camera work, but as I got older and as I got busier, especially in high school, I realized that I had to be intentional with my time. If there were things that I wanted to be good at (like dance), I had to put in the work to make that happen. But I always loved to perform, and I always loved to make people laugh too. Growing up we also moved around a lot because my dad was in the Navy, so it became second nature to me to adapt to new surroundings and kind of reinvent myself everywhere we lived, from Hawaii to Mississippi to Northern Virginia and more. And that has ended up not only playing a crucial role in who I am today, but also in my ability to create character as an actor.
By the time I got to college, I was pretty focused on building a career for myself. I double majored in English and Public Relations and graduated with a job working for CBS College Sports. But really, I didn’t have a strong sense of professional purpose, or a compass that was driving me forward in this time. I didn’t really know who I was. And that’s something that I feel is so hard for young adults in our current educational system – at the age of 18, 19, 20 you are expected to just know what you want to do for the rest of your life. To choose a field of study and then build a life around that. And as I know now, that really doesn’t work for most people. (Most of my Career Coaching clients are women in their late-twenties and mid-thirties who have realized they want to make a major shift in their professional lives).
Right after college I moved out to San Diego and started working. But it didn’t take me long to realize that something was missing – I didn’t feel connected to the work I was doing. So I did what a lot of people do and I job hopped around. I moved from being an Editor to working at marketing agencies and doing pretty much everything under the sun when it came to marketing.
Then in 2016, two very important things happened. The first was that I started working for a company called Brandetize that primarily served huge clients in the personal development industry – an industry I really didn’t know anything about other than the occasional “self help book.” I became the team leader for a guy named Brian Tracy and I started running all of his marketing, developing a lot of his programs, and learning how to build a sustainable, profitable evergreen business. And this really opened my eyes to the impact of this space – a whole industry built around the idea of helping people become the best versions of themselves. So I definitely started to have that feeling that this was something I wanted to explore further for myself. I also started to become really interested in the idea of “purpose” at this time, which was something that I previously had not connected with.
The second significant thing that happened in 2016 was that I started performing again. After five years of living in San Diego, I realized one day how much I missed dancing, and how much I missed performing in front of an audience. So I started taking dance class again. And then I started wondering if there was any way that I could get involved in the theatre scene in the San Diego area (I had no idea when I moved here in 2011, but San Diego is an incredibly rich artistic region with a robust theater scene). I auditioned for my first show in 10 years in 2016 and got cast as Sheila in A Chorus Line and this experience changed my life. It reconnected me with a part of myself that I had been neglecting, and I found a sense of passion and excitement in my life again, around doing something that I loved to do. I started auditioning for more and more shows and quickly found myself in the world of regional theater, and being a professional actor
It didn’t take me long to realize that trying to be a professional actor and having a full-time 9 to 5 marketing job was not going to work. I couldn’t be heading out to dance auditions at 2:00 p.m. on a Wednesday and also be working at a marketing agency. But around this time I also was experiencing a really strong draw to start my own business and find a way that I could make a real impact on people. My company Poised & Professional was started in 2016 as a blog that offered advice to women in the workplace on how to advocate for themselves and create careers of their own design. In 2018, I ended up shifting that to a full-time coaching business where I started offering resume writing and interview coaching services. Over the past few years I’ve expanded my offerings to include career coaching, personal branding development, and business coaching for other multi-hyphenate professionals like myself. All of my offerings are centered around helping my clients discover and use their unique gifts, and share their authentic stories with the world.
Today I divide my time between my work as an actor, and my work as an entrepreneur. I also have started to do some audition coaching for other actors, which I am finding I love to do as well. My motto is to “Do what you love, and help others.” And as long as I’m able to uphold that, there’s nothing more I can ask for.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
This is a really good question. I’d have to say one of the top qualities that really has served me as a professional is my drive. I always have been a hard worker, and work ethic is one of my core values. This was really instilled in me as a child by my parents, and it’s come to contribute to a lot of the success that I have seen in both my professional development, my artistic career, and my personal life. I truly believe that if you work hard enough, you can do anything that you put your mind to – there’s always a solution. And this belief has allowed me to achieve a lot of things that I’m very proud of. Even when I had no idea what the solution was at the time, I always believed that I would figure it out!
I think another quality that has allowed me to see a lot of success especially in the last 10 years is the decision to embrace authenticity; to not be afraid to be different. And this is really interesting because I would say that when I was younger I definitely had a lot of fear around being different. I desperately wanted to fit in; even in college, I struggled with this a lot. But over the last several years, I have really gone on that journey for myself of discovering who I authentically am. What makes me unique? What am I great at? What do I love to do? What do I care about? What lights me up? What is the story that I have to share with the world? And just kind of embracing this ongoing journey of self-discovery, and being deeply invested in knowing exactly who I am at all times. There’s this RuPaul quote that I love, “Know who you are and deliver it at all times,” and that’s something that really resonates with me. My career as an actor really took off once I started embracing this about myself. You can’t attempt to play other characters unless you have a deep connection with who YOU are, and when you show up in the room as your authentic self (and all the different aspects of who you are), you’re able to shine. This has come to be something I’m really passionate about: the belief that you can be more than one thing. That you don’t have to fit yourself into any sort of box or adhere to anyone’s expectation of you. I actually constructed a one-woman show around this exact idea which I performed in October 2022, and I’m looking forward to doing it again in the future!
The last quality that I think has been really impactful in my journey is faith. Faith in a religious sense, yes, but also faith that everything is going to work out exactly the way it’s supposed to. This is something that especially as an actor has really become paramount for me. You just have to trust that what’s meant for you is going to find you; the roles you’re meant to have will find their way into your life. There’s another quote I love: “Sometimes what didn’t work out for you really worked out for you.” And I’ve experienced this so many times. I wanted a role or a show so badly and it didn’t work out and I was devastated, and then just a few weeks or months later I was offered something that was an even better fit or an incredible experience that I never could have predicted. So I’ve learned to really trust the universe and God in this way. And this has been a transformative belief system for me.
To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?
I think the most impactful thing that my parents did for me when I was growing up was instilling a great sense of self-confidence in myself. When I was growing up, I was never told that I couldn’t or shouldn’t try things. My parents encouraged my brothers and I to do whatever we wanted, and to do our best at it.
I put a lot of pressure on myself (even as a child! That perfectionism kicked in early for me), and I would get frustrated easily. I would say things like “I can’t do this!” And my mom would always just say “You can. Don’t say that you can’t, because you can.” Her belief in me was so strong and so potent that I think I just kind of absorbed that, and I started to believe that if I really put my mind to it, I could make things happen for myself. That there was nothing that I couldn’t figure out or achieve or do. I think I really internalized that as a child and it has come to really be a fundamental aspect of how I view myself and how I view the world. I really do have this core belief now that I can figure out pretty much anything. That I can achieve anything – if I really put in the work.
And that was something that my parents instilled in me as well, the core value of hard work. Yes you can achieve anything, but you have to do the work. You have to practice. You have to put in the hours. You have to try. No one is going to do that for you except for you. So there was a lot of ownership around that as well as belief in myself and my ability to do these things.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.alyssaanneaustin.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alyssaanneaustin/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyssaguttendorf/
- Other: https://poisedandprofessional.com/
Image Credits
All photos by Adriana Zuniga-Williams
