Personal Brand Photo Shoot for

Elzabie Scott

BEHAVIOURAL RELATIONSHIP STRATEGIST

 

Behind every successful business is a woman with a story worth telling.

For the past 22 years, I’ve had the privilege of photographing people from all walks of life. Over time, my work has evolved into creating portraits that reveal not just what a woman looks like, but who she is.

Since launching my portrait magazine campaigns, more than 110 women have been featured across three magazine editions, each sharing her personal story alongside her portraits. Every woman featured is published in the magazine, creating a lasting record of her journey, her business and the impact she’s making.

The magazine is distributed to selected hotels, beauty spas, wellness clinics and other carefully chosen locations throughout Cape Town, giving every featured woman the opportunity to share both her story and her business with a wider audience.

To date, I’ve photographed almost 180 women through personal branding and portrait experiences, and every session has reinforced one belief: when a woman feels seen, her energy and confidence change, and so does the way others see her.

That inspired me to create SEEN™ | 20 Women, 20 Stories: The Personal Brand Experience, the fourth campaign in this series and the first dedicated exclusively to women building personal brands.

Created for entrepreneurs, business owners, coaches, consultants, course creators and creatives, this campaign goes far beyond creating beautiful photographs. It’s about helping women build a visual identity that reflects their expertise, personality and the impact they make through their work.

Every Personal Brand Experience begins long before the camera comes out. Together, we explore each client’s business, audience, personality, brand values and vision before planning wardrobe, styling, colours, locations and the overall visual direction for the session. Every decision is intentional, resulting in a collection of strategic images that can be used confidently across websites, LinkedIn, social media, speaking engagements, podcasts, books and press features.

I’m delighted to introduce Elzabie Scott, the first woman featured in this new campaign. As a Behavioural Relationship Strategist, Elzabie helps emotionally intelligent women better understand relationships, communicate with confidence and build healthier, more fulfilling connections.

Elzabie’s Personal Brand Experience took place across two carefully selected locations, each chosen to tell a different part of her story.

We began at a studio in Woodstock, where we created a series of clean, elegant editorial portraits. We then continued the session at Groot Constantia Wine Estate, South Africa’s oldest wine estate, where the vineyards, Cape Dutch architecture and historic surroundings brought a softer, more romantic dimension to her brand. The final part of the session took place at Simon’s Restaurant, whose elegant interiors, rich textures and warm atmosphere perfectly complemented Elzabie’s sophisticated yet approachable style.

Throughout the session, every element was chosen to support the story we wanted her images to tell. Her wardrobe featured timeless black pieces, elegant lace, statement gold jewellery, pearls and long black gloves, creating a refined editorial look with subtle nods to old Hollywood glamour. A crystal chandelier introduced a romantic touch that reflected the world of relationships, while her signature brand colours of black, gold, rich reds and hints of purple added depth and consistency throughout the collection.

By combining the contemporary feel of the studio with the timeless elegance of Groot Constantia, we created a collection of images that reflects both the authority and warmth Elzabie brings to her work as a Behavioural Relationship Strategist.

Are you ready to dive into Elzabie’s story? Enjoy!

What inspired you to start your business, and what keeps you excited about the work you do today?

I never thought I would be the woman writing about heartbreak for a magazine. In my teens and twenties, relationships were as disposable as coffee cups. Useful for a moment, then tossed aside without a second thought. Men came and went, and I barely noticed the trail of broken hearts behind me. Karma, however, was taking notes…

Then, at thirty, I fell in love. Not the cute, Instagram-worthy kind. I am talking about the devastating, cannot eat, cannot sleep, checking-my-phone-every-three-minutes kind of love. The happy, careless little mouse running the wheel in my brain tripped, face planted, and lay there questioning every single life choice she had ever made.

Suddenly I was the one wondering why he had not texted back. The one calculating the perfect response time. The one searching for the exact combination of words and actions that would make him choose me, adore me, love me.

When it ended, my heart did not just break; it shattered into pieces. The pain was physical. My ego took a direct hit, and my self-worth bled out over several agonising months.

For almost a year, I sought recovery on Tinder, which I can now confirm is roughly like treating a burn by setting yourself on fire. I was hacking away at my self-worth, one swipe at a time.

Somewhere in the middle of that mess, something in me finally snapped awake. Not hope exactly. A ferocious curiosity. I was done being the woman this kept happening to. So I started researching, experimenting and documenting everywhere I had gone wrong, one failed almost-relationship at a time.

That curiosity became an obsession. I was not only trying to avoid another heartbreak. I was trying to understand the mechanics underneath it.

What started as learning “the games” became something far more useful: genuine insight into how men think, respond, and commit. I realised that what men think they want is actually opposite to what brings out their masculinity and drive for pursuit. Not manipulation. Translation.

A decade later, I understood men better than most women do. It was never about tricks and tactics. It was about communication across the gender divide, and somewhere along the way I became the bridge.

My heartbreak gave me an unexpected gift: empathy. I could finally see both sides of the equation.

I know what it feels like to want someone to take you by the hand through the desperate, dizzying chaos of dating and relationships you lost yourself in and simply show you the way. That is exactly what I want to be for other women. A guide who helps them avoid unnecessary heartbreak, while bringing out the best in the men who genuinely want to adore and treasure them the way they deserve.

On the other side of that kind of pain is wisdom. Wisdom brings a very different kind of love. The kind that does not only sweep you off your feet. The kind that hands you solid ground to stand on.

Who is your ideal client, and what transformation do you hope they experience?

My clients are emotionally intelligent, high-functioning women. They read and feel people before they have even sat down. They run teams, businesses, and households beautifully. They just do not realise that the very emotional intelligence and capability serving them so well in their careers and in life is costing them in love.

They read other people’s needs so well that they adjust without even noticing, because they have been doing it since childhood. They arrive carrying a particular kind of tired. The kind that comes from being the most capable person in every situation, except her own love life.

After working with me, they learn to read a man’s behaviour instead of his assumed potential. Low-effort and toxic men lose access early. The right men lean in and step up.

My favourite transformation is watching a woman recognise her own power inside a relationship, and truly be pursued and adored by the man she is dating or committed to. I have realised a lot of women do not even know what it feels like to be adored and pursued like the goddess she really is.

She stops asking whether he likes her. She starts choosing.

What is one challenge you’ve had to overcome in your business, and what did it teach you?

Putting my own face and story on this work. It is one thing to understand relational dynamics. It is quite another to stand up under your own name and admit you learnt this through two marriages and a heartbreak that flattened you.

For years I taught women how to bring out the best in a man. How to inspire real commitment and be treated the way they actually want to be treated. Essentially, what most of us should have been taught growing up, except very few of us ever had that example. It goes so far against what women have been told to believe that most will never even try it.

While I stayed scared of being judged, I constantly witnessed women giving their power away in relationships. Perfection, it turns out, is just a very well-decorated hiding place, and continuing to hide had started to feel selfish. So I stopped.

How has becoming more visible helped your business grow?

You cannot help anyone if nobody knows you exist. Everything changed the day I swallowed my pride and pressed record on my very first video.

Women recognised themselves in what I said, in my story and in my pain. Visibility brought clients from countries I have never set foot in, opportunities I would never have thought to ask for, and a community of sharp, perceptive women who each believed she was the only one carrying this.

The work was always good. Visibility simply let it travel.

5. Many women hesitate to put themselves out there. What would you say to someone who’s holding back?

Nobody is judging you the way you think they are. There will always be people who want to pull you down to their level. Notice it is never the successful, happy people who do that.

It takes courage. I am not going to pretend it does not, but the women you admire for showing up are not braver than you. They simply decided that being of service mattered more than being flawless.

Somewhere out there is a woman lying awake with the exact problem you know how to solve. Your silence is not protecting you. It is costing her.

Start before you feel ready. Ready is a rumour.

What did you enjoy most about your Personal Brand Experience?

Let’s be honest. I am sure you can have your photos taken by many fantastic photographers, and that I have done, so know when I tell you the following it is not from a lack of experience.

I spend a great deal of effort making women know how powerful they are and helping them really feel seen in their fullness. I literally read people for a living, so there are very few people who can turn that mirror onto me and make me have that experience in their presence myself.

The Personal Brand Experience with Monica is not just the absolutely stunning photographs that get taken. It is the way she makes you feel while being photographed that creates the woman captured in them.

When I saw the final images, I recognised the woman my clients meet: warm, a little mischievous, bold and entirely herself. I saw myself captured as the woman I know I am, but do not always see in the mirror. It is because Monica brings out the goddess in you, and then quickly captures her.

How are you using your personal branding photographs in your business?

Everywhere a woman might meet me before she meets me: my website at elzabiescott.com, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, plus press features like this one.

In my world, trust is everything. I needed to look put together and polished, yet still relatable and approachable. Finding a photographer who understands that exact balance matters more than people realise.

A woman deciding whether to tell me the unpolished version of her love life wants to know exactly who she is opening up to. These images have to answer that question before I say a single word.

If someone was considering a Personal Brand Experience but felt nervous, what would you say?

Nervous is normal when you are about to do something that actually matters.

I walked into my own shoot terrified my nerves would show up in every photo. I think a lot of that comes from imagining the photographer standing there with the camera while you just have to pose and hope for the best.

Monica guides you so well that you do not even have to think. You can just be, and laugh, and recognise this is a rare moment where it is all about you. That was what I didn’t expect. This experience was a gift I did not realise I had given myself until I was already standing inside it.

The nerves fade the moment Monica picks up her camera. What stays is the extraordinary woman you’ve become looking back at you in the photographs.

What’s one thing you wish more people knew about the woman behind your business?

People assume I am girly. Someone who would rather not get her hands dirty. Underneath any polish, I am built for hard work, discipline, and doing things properly with my own two hands.

I built treehouses as a child. I played with the boys more than I ever played with dolls, and when I did reach for a doll, it was usually to make her an outfit, not to mother her. That instinct never left me.

What people miss underneath the capable exterior is a woman who feels everything deeply, and who cares in a way that borders on maternal even when there is no child anywhere in sight. I am the woman who will happily do the unglamorous, hands-on work herself, and then go home and cry at a stranger’s wedding video.

Capable on the outside. Tender underneath. Entirely unafraid of either.

Outside of your business, how do you love spending your time?

I have gathered the most incredible circle of diverse friendships around me, and I love nothing more than picking their brains about absolutely everything.

Give me an unhurried morning, a cappuccino, and a serene walk on the beach, and I can handle any kind of day.

A Few Quick Favourites

Three words my closest friends would use to describe me: Apparently I am charismatic, magnetic and spontaneous

A book every woman should read or listen to: A New Earth by Eckart Tolle

A podcast I love: Esther Perel’s Where Should We Begin? It’s real couples in real sessions, unscripted, and it’s built entirely on reading what’s actually happening beneath what people say, which is right up my alley.

A quote or mantra I live by: “Start unknown. Finish unforgettable”

One word that describes the season I’m stepping into: Ignition 🔥

 

Where to connect with Elzabie Scott

Click on the appropriate links next to the social media platforms.

Website: www.elzabiescott.com

Instagram: @elzabiescott

TikTok: @elzabiescott

Facebook: @Elzabiescott 

LinkedIn: @Elzabiescott

YouTube: @Elzabiescott

 

Hair and makeup: Kirsten Murphy

Elzabie’s brand strategy and website design by Carol Hampshire.

Carol builds the most magnetic brands!