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She cracked the code on making a living as an actor. Then she built the business to share it with 900 more.
elise arsenault · the global actor
Elise Arsenault
The Great Audiobook Adventure
An actor, vocalist, and educator who turned 10 years of audiobook narration into a program that gave 900 other actors a way to make a real living from their craft.
Elise Arsenault has been an actor her whole life – national tours, regional theater, union contracts. She started narrating audiobooks in 2015 and has since recorded more than 175 titles, including the Definitive Biography of Madonna (40 hours – already an award-winner and nominated for more). Her husband Justin, a sound engineer, helped her build a professional home studio, and what started as a way to replace the bartending and temp work that funded her acting career became the model she now teaches to hundreds of actors every year.
The Great Audiobook Adventure is a full startup program: vocal translation from theater to audiobook, home studio setup for any budget, publisher outreach templates, and community mentorship from graduates who are now award-winning narrators themselves. The promise is concrete: pay for the course with your first job. Pay for the studio with your second.
Grow a program that was already working into something more structured and scalable — with the team infrastructure, marketing systems, and leadership confidence to stop doing everything herself and truly lead the business she'd been building for years.
Program was working. Business was outgrowing everything she had.
Elise had listened to Racheal’s podcast for years before she could afford the CEO Collective. She attended CEO Retreats first, booked 1×1 sessions, and implemented what she could. She had the product, the students, and the mission. What she was missing was the infrastructure – and the leadership confidence – to stop carrying it all herself.
01
Outgrowing Every System
By the time Elise joined the CEO Collective, she had been attending CEO Retreats and booking one-on-ones for years – extracting as much as she could at each stage before the full investment made sense. She knew the framework. She was implementing it. But the business was growing faster than her systems could hold it. Certain items had been on her quarterly goals list for six, seven, even eight retreats without ever getting done. The accountability of the full Collective was the missing piece.
02
People Pleaser vs Growing Team
Scaling to 900 clients meant building a team – and building a team meant having hard conversations, giving direct feedback, and holding boundaries with people who depended on her. As a self-described recovering people pleaser, Elise found this genuinely difficult. She kept bringing the same challenge to every quarterly call: how do I stand in my power as a leader? How do I ask for what I need without feeling like I’m being unkind? The Collective gave her the coaching – and the mirror – she needed.
03
Podcast Delayed for 2 Years
There was one thing Elise had wanted to do for two years that kept not happening: launching her podcast. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how. It kept getting deprioritized because the urgent things – keeping the growing program running, onboarding team, refining marketing – kept taking precedence. It took being inside the Collective for three full quarters to finally make it real. The accountability structure closed the gap between wanting to do something and actually doing it.
ELISE ARSENAULT · THE GLOBAL ACTOR
What the system actually built for Elise.
Elise came in already knowing the framework. What the full Collective gave her was the accountability, the leadership coaching, and the community that turned what she already knew into what she actually did, consistently, quarter after quarter, even when it was hard.
PHASE 01
Cross-Promotion as the Growth Engine — No Big Following Required
Elise’s marketing strategy is a masterclass in leverage. She doesn’t build audiences from scratch. She finds coaches who serve adjacent audiences – film and TV acting coaches, career coaches for performers – and offers to share free resources with each other’s lists. No massive social media presence required. Just one conversation at a time, starting with people she knew, branching to people she hadn’t met yet. The result: 900 students in five years from a personal Instagram she describes as small.
PHASE 02
Leadership Confidence — Learning to Ask for What She Needs
Elise’s biggest recurring challenge: standing in her power as a leader. Giving feedback. Holding boundaries. Asking directly for what she needed from her team without feeling unkind. The Collective gave her ongoing coaching on exactly this – not a one-time lesson, but a repeated rhythm of bringing the same struggle, getting coaching, and returning with how it went. Over time, the people pleaser who struggled to make hard asks became the leader who could build a team of graduate mentors and hand real responsibility to them.
PHASE 03
The Accountability That Finally Got the Podcast Launched
For two years, Elise’s podcast had been a goal that kept getting deferred. She believed in it. She wanted it. It never quite made it to the top of the plan. Being inside the Collective – with the standing accountability rhythm, the quarterly planning structure, and the community watching – finally closed the gap. Three quarters in, the podcast launched. The framework didn’t just help Elise run her business better. It helped her finish the things she’d been meaning to start.
What it looks like when a creative finally builds the business that matches the mission.
I’ve been an actor my whole life. I knew at five years old that this was my calling. And for years, like so many actors, I was doing the other jobs – the ones that paid the bills while I was working toward the thing I actually wanted. Waiting tables. Temping. Whatever it took. That’s the reality of the creative life that nobody talks about honestly enough.
What I discovered – first for myself, and then for the 900 actors I’ve since trained – is that audiobook narration is a real career. Not a side hustle. Not a compromise. A creative, well-compensated career that uses every skill you developed as an actor, and that you can build from your own home. You don’t have to go be the bartender anymore.
"When artists connect to business, it's incredible what we can do. I always looked for these systems - how to prepare for the audition, how to follow up, how to build the career. It just took me a while to apply that same thinking to the business itself."
I attended CEO Retreats for years before I could afford to join the full Collective. I booked one-on-ones. I listened to the podcast obsessively. When I finally joined, I had the framework in my head — I just hadn’t finished implementing it. Some things had been on my quarterly goals list for eight retreats.
The biggest thing the Collective gave me wasn’t a new strategy. It was the accountability to actually do the things I already knew I needed to do – including the hard things, like building a team, giving feedback, and holding the boundaries that were the only way to keep a growing program from consuming everything I had.
What’s different now
Elise’s biggest wins.
Result 01
900 Actors Trained — Award Winners Among Them
Result 02
Graduate Mentors Running the Community
Result 03
Podcast Finally Launched — After Two Years on the List
Result 04
Leading With Confidence — Not People Pleasing
Featured Episode · Promote Yourself to CEO®
You Don’t Have to Be the Bartender Anymore — How One Actor Built a Business for Creatives
Elise joins Racheal to talk about discovering audiobook narration as the creative career that replaced all the other jobs, building the Great Audiobook Adventure from three years of research into a 900-person program, and what the CEO Collective gave her that she couldn’t get from listening to the podcast alone.
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CEOs Building Unshakeable Businesses.
You don’t have to figure it out alone
or wait until you can afford to.
Elise attended CEO Retreats for years before she could afford the full Collective. She got value at every stage. When she finally joined, the accountability, the leadership coaching, and the community closed every gap that had been holding her back. Start where you are. The framework grows with you.