#98 Elissa Dunn: HellQueen Cocktails and Building a Brand Behind the Bar

Most bartenders treat social media like a hobby and their bar shifts like a career. Some people embrace the other path. The bartenders building real leverage: books, products, brands, audiences that follow them across jobs, are treating the bar as the launchpad, not the destination. Elissa Dunn of @hellqueencockails built that exact playbook in five years, starting from a cubicle and a wine-spill firing. In this episode she breaks down why her social is run like a portfolio not a personality, what she had to rebuild from scratch when a trademark blew up her original brand, and the moment she walked away from a bartending job she loved because the brand needed the time more than the bar did. If you've been behind the stick for years and can't point to anything you actually own then this is the missing playbook.

Expect to Learn:

• Why one trademark mistake forced Elissa to scrap her original brand and start completely over
• How she used social media as a portfolio instead of entertainment to engineer career opportunities most bartenders never get offered
• The mental trick she uses to keep filming when she remembers how many people are actually watching
• What she had to give up at the bar to finally build something that pays her outside of it

Links:

• ⁠Hell Queen Cocktails on Instagram⁠
• ⁠HellQueen's Website⁠

Service starts now.

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I talk to people in and around the service industry space. I'm looking to hear from the people I wish I could have talked to when I was coming up in bars. Said another way: I am trying to make sense of this wild, beautiful mess that can be a life working in bars, and help others that are feeling similarly confused and/or lost. Check out the Podcast Website ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and get in touch with me!

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• ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bobby "G" Gleason⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

As always, I’m just here taking notes, trying to figure out what it all means.

Cheers