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Meet Elizabeth Erickson of Pegasus Media in Design District

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Elizabeth Erickson.

Elizabeth, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
They say that who you are as a child is your most authentic self. I guess when people ask when I wanted to become a serial entrepreneur, I should have said when I started selling products and services door to door as a six year old or when I wrote my first book, “Kayla’s Pizza Party” at age eight. (It should be noted that the sequel, “The Worst Wedding” had an infinitely better plot line). But the truth is, it took me a few more years before I started my career as a serial entrepreneur. I received my Bachelor’s degree from Southern Methodist University in 2011 because their amazing convergence Journalism program fit my skill set, but not because I ever intended to go into news media. While in college, I started by first business, Elizabeth Erickson Photography, and was a full-time wedding and portrait photographer by the time I had graduated college. I also supplemented with writing and editing freelance jobs as they presented themselves.

During my junior year of college I began experiencing health symptoms including digestive issues, panic attacks, and bouts of depression. After I graduated and was full-on into my career, I experienced a “bottoming out” and realized that neither my body nor my mind were in a good place. Over the course of about a year, I discovered the healing power of essential oils, pursued inner healing, and changed my diet (although that didn’t last long because I really like wine, and cheese, and gluten). It didn’t take long for my body, soul, and spirit to all begin working in unison and feeling better and my career got back on track.

I continued nurturing my photography company and began graduate school in Applied Cognition and Neuroscience at the University of Texas at Dallas in 2013. It was around that time that I was approached by a friend of a friend to come on board with a new startup company they were launching. I reluctantly did, but am so thankful that I joined. Over the course of four years (and what ended up being two startups), our online publishing company made over $7MM before we sold it last year. We built an amazing team of people and I had an incredible time writing, editing, and growing our team.

Last year, just two weeks after we sold our company, I released by first book and DVD, “Mind Your Brain: Optimizing Your Life and Health Using Essential Oils”. So far, it’s received an amazing response and people are not only reading and watching it, but sharing it with others! Through my own journey of healing, synthesized with my knowledge of essential oils with my expertise in neuroscience, I am honored to get to help people overcome their mental and emotional blocks, eliminate distraction, create a plan of action for their health and wellness, while maintaining peace of mind, healthy relationships, and cultivating internal fulfillment.

Now, I speak, write, and am a Cognitive Behavioral Coach full time as well as oversee the day-to-day team at Pegasus Media and have my hands in a few other new businesses including a starting a winery in Dallas with friends.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Anyone who says that being an entrepreneur is easy, probably isn’t really an entrepreneur. There are amazing advantages to owning your own company, but there are also massive challenges. Probably the biggest challenge I’ve faced is keeping a balanced life. Since this has been my life for over 10 years, I would say that only recently have I really learned a healthy rhythm of life. Until about a year ago, I can safely say (and my family and friends will vouch) that I was likely a functioning workaholic. That “diagnosis” sounds glamorous, until you come face to face with the reality that the people you love the most feel like they’re on a checklist and you are burned out trying to keep plates spinning. I’ve remedied this by building in better systems and processes, saying no to more things and people, and scheduling intentional rest and play time—alone and with the people I love the most.

Other challenges I’ve faced are learning to scale a business, massive internal struggles with business partners, handling financial ups and downs, and learning to overcome massive perfectionism while on a book deadline. Since I figure I have another 50+ years of entrepreneur life ahead of me, likely I’ll have many more lessons to speak of to come.

Pegasus Media – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Using my background in Applied Cognition and Neuroscience and combining it with my own story of overcoming stress, panic attacks and anxiety, I help others understand the spectrum between the sides of their brain and how that relates to both the practical and the inspirational so that they can overcome the mental blocks which are preventing them from living their most vibrant life. The result is that my clients make more money, live a more fulfilled entrepreneurial life, have better relationships and are happier. In addition to my work with clients, our think tank company, Pegasus Media, is a boutique publisher that provides services to select entrepreneurs and creatives to help them publish content on the web or in print and we guide them along the journey from concept to content creation and development and finally to the point of sale.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I think there are two. The first one is the day that we told our team that we had successfully sold the company. We’d seen other startups around us have unsuccessful ends (i.e. bankruptcy, massive downsizing, etc.), but we were able to have a successful closure, “send off”, and celebrate all that we had accomplished as a team. It was bittersweet to see everyone go off on new adventures, but I was genuinely thrilled at what we had built together.

The second one was when I held the first printed copy of my book, Mind Your Brain. Both my grandfather and my father had completed manuscripts and my family are all really talented—many of them writers, but I was the first one to publish a manuscript. It felt like a generational ceiling had been broken and I was humbled and honored to get to stand there with a “baby” I had labored over, but I also knew was because of the people who had gone before me.

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Image Credit:
Black and White Image: Copyright – Trey Hill
Portrait: Copyright – Ben Campbell

Getting in touch: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.

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