Episode 030
Elizabeth Bachman
Are you tired of being the “best-kept secret” in your industry? In this episode of Women’s Million Dollar Conversations, Alice Tang sits down with Elizabeth Bachman, the founder of Strategic Speaking for Executives and a veteran international opera director. Elizabeth shares how she translated decades of directing opera stars into a proprietary system for helping corporate leaders own the stage and the boardroom.
Elizabeth reveals why visibility is just as important as ability and discusses the specific communication barriers that often hold women back from the million-dollar mark. If you want to learn how to present yourself as the expert you truly are, Elizabeth’s insights on “Star Power” are a masterclass in professional impact.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
-How to transition from a technical expert to a recognized leader.
-The “Opera Director’s Secret” to managing high-stakes pressure and presence.
-Why you must align your message with your audience’s “WIIFM” (What’s In It For Me).
-Elizabeth’s strategy for breaking through gender-based communication biases.
"I'm an introvert, so I recharge alone, but I absolutely reach out for help to surround myself with people who are good at the things I'm not good at, and also who won't let me chicken out, who keep pushing me."
Alice Tang: [00:00:00] Hello, Elizabeth Beckman. So grateful for you today. I’m gonna ask for permission that we can one, record this video of our conversation about women’s million dollar conversations, and also ask for your permission to distribute it either in entirety, the video or impartial in the future to the public.
Would you give us that
Elizabeth Bachman: permission? You have permission for both. Great.
Alice Tang: Good morning, Elizabeth Beckman. I am so happy to see you. Are you in the northwest or are you
Elizabeth Bachman: in Austria? Oh, Alice, it’s lovely to hear you. At this point we are recording. I’m in Portland, Oregon across the river from you.
Alice Tang: Beautiful. Beautiful. We used to live within the same proximity of neighborhood in the Northwest.
Yes. But I choose to move away from you for some reason.
Crazy. I’m so glad that you’re with us. I know. We got a very short window of time, stealing a [00:01:00] little time from you and your work with the most successful people who aspire to be millionaires. So who we are, I want you to introduce yourself to our audience, and then we can take the
Elizabeth Bachman: questions.
Great. I’m Elizabeth Bachman, as you’ve heard, and I, what I do now is work with. The women who are in high level women who are hitting a glass ceiling, and what I hear over and over is women say, I’ve got a seat at the table now, but I’m still not being listened to, and so I see others get the promotions that should come to me, or the recognition that should come to me help.
So what I do is I help these women advance their careers and show up as thought leaders by giving them a message how to change the way they’re perceived by changing the way they [00:02:00] communicate and thus they get the allies they want and the promotions or raises or funding they want, and really the recognition that they deserve.
Alice Tang: So change their communication awards and change the
Elizabeth Bachman: results. Change the way you’re perceived. Yes.
Alice Tang: Awesome. How long have you been doing this line of work? I.
Elizabeth Bachman: This particular line of work is what has evolved from this is career four or five for me. I like to think it’s all been around great communication so that I’ve been dedicated to the art of great communication since I first walked on stage at the age of five.
And afterwards my mom said, She was the best goddamn bunny rabbit ever to grace the stage of the Hillside school. And I thought, oh, this is cool. I’m gonna be an actor. And I went from acting to [00:03:00] directing opera singers, to running an opera company. And finally came to the point where it was a lifetime of that I was ready to do something else.
So now what I do is I leverage what I’ve learned in business from running a company and all the things I learned about presentation, working with people like Lujano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo. To help business professionals present themselves as a leader who should be followed or hired. And I mostly work with women because I have made all the mistakes myself.
So I hope to help people not make the same mistakes I did. Beautiful.
Alice Tang: You almost gave away your age. You haven’t yet.
Elizabeth Bachman: I figured this is the career that combines it all, and I will keep doing this until I fall over [00:04:00] because I love I’m all about communication. And language and words.
So I love helping people really step up and claim their voices and then use their communication, their speaking, to get the result they want. So it’s really about how do you show up and then use it strategically so that you get that promotion, you get past the glass ceiling you get the funding that you need, whatever it is.
So
Alice Tang: since we are in the woman’s million dollar conversation, I got to ask this question. Yes. What’s the value of money for you?
Elizabeth Bachman: The value of money is, it helps you get what you need, basically. So it’s a tool? It’s a tool, yes. So we sharpened the tool. Sharpening the tool. Exactly. And one
Alice Tang: of the way to sharpen the tool is to change your words and get to what you want according to Elizabeth.
Let’s listen
[00:05:00] on. All right. Elizabeth, we are curious about what is the, one of the biggest bias on your role to success? What will you
Elizabeth Bachman: say the biases Back in my opera days, before I started an opera company, I wanted to run an opera company. So I applied for jobs as a as an artistic director or a general director for various opera companies.
And over I was on the shortlist ’cause I was really well known on the short list number two, number three, I always saw the job go to a man. And that was the external bias, the internal bias was, I thought it was because there was something wrong with me. Oh. And it wasn’t until I learned what I do now in terms of leadership and how you get support and how you use your allies, that I realized the problem had not been so much.[00:06:00]
External bias. That was part of it, but it was also how I was sabotaging myself, and I wasn’t showing up as a leader. I wasn’t using the resources I had, and I was also marketing myself to the wrong people. I was one of the many women who was sitting back and waiting to be recognized for the good work she did.
Rather than promoting myself to the people who were actually making the decisions. And now I know because I’ve learned this the hard way working with executives that you can be well-known by your peers, but they’re not the ones who hire you. You’ve got to be well-known to the people who can promote you, who can refer you, who could be mentors.
And so that’s a huge part of what I do, helping women rise in their organization. And in their [00:07:00] industry and showing up as a leader through how they communicate. Great
Alice Tang: answer and we love it. Elizabeth, one of the resonances that I had goosebumps because you talk about how to People who could hire you or give you the business aware of you?
I teach networking. A part of the journey is networking to the top. You got to hang out with a different crowd. To get what you want. If you hang out with your peers, which is great. Which is great. So everybody have the same ability. Everybody has a similar experience. Exactly. Exactly.
It’s comfortable. It’s very comfortable because I’m not going to be, many women do not want to. I shy other people. I know you and I are not, although we have different height shorter than five, and probably you’re approaching six, I’m guessing.
Elizabeth Bachman: We’re both sitting down, so it doesn’t matter.
Alice Tang: I always need to stand in all [00:08:00] the people who can recognize me because when I sit down they can’t see me.
But the bottom line is Hang out with a different crowd if you really want to get there now. No. All of us wanna get there. I recognize that. But we are here to recognize those who want to, and you, in your journey, Elizabeth, you have helped many to break through the glass ceiling, get to that million dollar income, or the first million dollar company revenue.
Yes. So today we are focusing on that,
Elizabeth Bachman: isn’t it? Yes, indeed. It’s helping others get to that million dollars, and I’m not at a million dollars yet, but it is on the plan. So I can see how I can get there.
Alice Tang: Yes. I, you want to share a small secrets about Elizabeth. She has the aspiration to get to the million dollars of revenue, but in the other areas, she worth a million thank you to her family and to us.
Awesome. So let’s continue. If it’s okay with you could you
[00:09:00] share with us one thing? If you were to meet one of our audience here and they said, I really wanna be at Elizabeth, what’s the one thing you can tell them to be successful? To go get it? To have the courage, to have the
Elizabeth Bachman: power I. I would say allies.
Find your allies because what I find, especially for women tend to be relational. So we connect through our relationships and I. Society has, but we’ve got centuries and centuries of history keeping women in their place. And it’s really only been in the last 50, 60 years that women are taking an equal place in business.
Which means that there are centuries of socialization and training against this, that trying to keep us small. [00:10:00] Having a cohort of allies who will encourage you, tell you, yes, you can do this. Don’t wait till you’re 150% ready. Just go do it. Having that cohort who will help you challenge you, don’t let you chicken out but also connect you to others to that networking up.
That’s really important. That’s something I do with the visible and valued masterminds is we create cohorts of peers where you are all at the same level. And I always like it when I’m not the smartest person in the room. I’m pretty smart. Amen.
Alice Tang: On that one.
Elizabeth Bachman: Yeah I love it when there are other people who are smarter than I am and I can learn from them.
So finding the cohort of peers is very important. Very good airlines
Alice Tang: and your network is your net worth if you want to. Exactly.
Elizabeth Bachman: To the top. [00:11:00] Exactly.
Alice Tang: Great. On your journey to today’s very superior level of coaching, many million air women one question I really want to know is I’m sure that you have some downtime or very tough time in that journey when you really want to quit. You choose not to, that’s why you’re in front of us. What
What
Elizabeth Bachman: kept you going? What kept me going are my allies. When I want to quit, it’s easy. It’s easy for me to just get stuck in my own head. and hear all the reasons why something won’t work. So I reach out to my allies and my network to say, talk to me.
What do you do when something like this happens? Help me. Or sometimes I just, I call the people I trust and I say, help tell me I’m doing this right. Tell me, I can tell me I can make it work. And and they help me. Talk [00:12:00] myself out of the defeated or the defeatist voices in my head. So the
Alice Tang: people around you, your network and your cohort actually is the secret sauce.
To get you out of the very dam of the valley Yes. So that you can rechallenge the peak one more time and the higher peak.
Elizabeth Bachman: Yes. I can’t do it alone. And I know there are some people who are Okay. Alone I am. I’m an introvert, so I recharge alone, but I absolutely reach out for help to surround myself with people who are good at the things I’m not good at, and who can, and also who won’t let me chicken out, who keep pushing me to say no, you said you wanted to do this.
Okay, let’s do it.
Alice Tang: Accountability, I agree. Is the number one thing. I heard the statistics actually, we can track back. 65% of the people [00:13:00] completed what they said they would do if they just share with somebody. Yep. 95% of the people completed what they do. If they would share with someone and have an accountability call
Elizabeth Bachman: or meeting.
Yes, exactly. I tell you, I am a world class procrastinator, so if there’s something I don’t wanna do, there’s, I can find out so many reasons not to do it. So having somebody else hold me accountable is, that’s how I get things done. And, with some of my assistants, I will hire people to do something.
I could do it myself, but they’ll do it faster. And then that leaves my time for for the things that only I can do. Elizabeth,
Alice Tang: I’m having another set of goosebumps because I was writing journals my journal, daily journal this morning and I wrote down what really give me joy. Many things I can do very well, but the things that give me joined is [00:14:00] putting together events so that people can meet each other.
They come out of the event feeling that they have gained. Some experience reminded of some of the things they used to know and do and forgotten, and more importantly, come up with new friendships, maybe one or two, so that give me the most joy. Can I do what I do daily to manage the firm? The answer is yes, I can.
But that gave me the second joy. The first joy is connecting people to their highest resource.
Elizabeth Bachman: Creating good events is, I was in the events business for 30 years. Creating an event like that is a skill and an art. So Brava. That’s one of the reasons I first wanted to meet you. Yeah.
Alice Tang: Awesome.
So we are winding down to one or two questions here. Gosh. What is one piece of very good or very bad advice that made a very big impact [00:15:00] in your career and professional life or business life?
Elizabeth Bachman: The thing that is present for me right now I’ve had advice, good advice and bad advice for through my whole career, but, My tendency often has been to just hold on tight and move forwards.
And that was a skill I developed early on as a child, and it’s just that keeps me moving forward, but it’s not as useful. So the advice I got recently and was reminded of, let’s say I knew this, I just didn’t pay attention. Is the words receive, surrender, and trust. Oh my goodness. And that means allowing myself to receive gifts from the universe, from friends, to surrender control [00:16:00] which is hard for me.
I like to be in control, so to surrender, control and let things happen. So open myself to receive, which also means trusting that the universe is going to help me. I can trust other people. I’ve been, I’m pretty good at trusting other people. Trusting myself has always been a challenge. So even at my age, I’m still working on receive, surrender, and trust.
I
Alice Tang: love that. I love that. I’m trying to let go of my control issues. Not that I need to take medications every morning, but you also, have expectation of certain things going to happen. When I let go, I feel very peaceful.
Elizabeth Bachman: Strangely. Yeah. Which means trusting that things are gonna come out.
Okay.
Alice Tang: It may not be the expected result that I see, [00:17:00] but just know that in the end, that’s happening for the best and the highest benefit for me and everybody
Elizabeth Bachman: around me. So you really have to trust the universe to do that. I have three, three. Bowling is
Alice Tang: not my specialty. I haven’t jumped up a plane yet.
Let’s do it,
Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Bachman: Yes. I have a quick story that I was reminded of please do about, oh, in my early thirties, I was going through a difficult time in my life and and so I was working with a self-help group and somebody said, I. If you’re frustrated, why don’t you try reading the 23rd Psalm out of out loud.
And I, I grew up with the Bible, but I’m not particularly religious. I believe more in a universal power, whatever. I was on a walk one morning and I was really in a terrible space. I was angry. So I was charging up the hill and I was going, the Lord [00:18:00] is my shepherd. I shall not What?
The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not. What? The Lord is a shepherd. I shall not what? Damn. And I suddenly thought, whoa. What if goodness and mercy have been following me all the days of my life? I was so busy charging up the hill, cursing God that I never noticed that they were right behind me.
They’re following me, and I stopped halfway up that hill and hosed my eyes and reached my arms back as if goodness and mercy were sisters ready to help me. As long as I slowed down enough to ask and they would actually help me get up the hill, and I was so stuck in my own head that I didn’t notice. So now [00:19:00] I have reminders.
I put up reminders from time to time. So I’ll surprise myself and say, remember, goodness and mercy are following you all the days of your life. You just have to slow down, release, surrender, and trust to ask them for help.
Alice Tang: What a beautiful story. To close our conversation, I have a last more question. Short answer is great.
What are you grateful for today?
Elizabeth Bachman: I am grateful for the friends who remind me to slow down to release, surrender, and trust. So that I can do it if I’m reminded. I just need a little help sometimes. So that’s what I’m
Alice Tang: grateful for. Please count me in. Thank you Elizabeth. We are so grateful for time that you give us and sharing your experience.
How do people
Elizabeth Bachman: find you? [00:20:00] You can find me on LinkedIn, Elizabeth Bachman. It’s Elizabeth with a z and Bachman is b a c h m a n, one n or@elizabethbachman.com.
Alice Tang: Beautiful. Have a beautiful, blessed day. Thank you,
Elizabeth Bachman: Alice. Bye.
Elizabeth Bachman is the go-to expert for advanced training in Speaking, Presentation Skills, Sales, and Leadership.
Leveraging a lifetime spent perfecting the art of presenting—including directing opera luminaries like Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo in over 50 operas worldwide—Elizabeth helps high-level clients master a concise and compelling message that secures the Funding they need, the Allies they want, and the Recognition they deserve.
A sought-after strategist in Silicon Valley and internationally, Elizabeth works with leaders and influencers to help them present as smart, down-to-earth, and approachable—even funny—while still being taken seriously. Fluent in five languages, her global experience is key to working effectively with presenters from many countries.
She is the host of the award-winning international podcast, Speakers Who Get Results, and the creator of “How to Get Booked as a Speaker: Taking Your Show on the Road.” Elizabeth regularly presents for corporations such as Bank of America, Gilead Sciences, and FEMA, and has been featured alongside business greats like Dr. Ivan Meisner and Steve Forbes.