299: The Truth About Building A Business While Working A 9 - 5

Melissa Henault [: 00:00:00

Hey, hey, hey, I hope you guys enjoy these what I'm calling podcast shorts for my burnout to all out community. This is just a little peek behind the curtain of the coaching that goes on inside of my programs, we're bringing to you some of the best nuggets and coaching I'm giving within hot seats of all of our different programs, whether it's our LinkedIn Method Academy, our mini mastermind business basics all the way up to our higher level mastermind. If you're hearing some of these questions, and you're like, Man, I wish I could get my burning question answered by Melissa. Hey, guess what, you could be featured on my podcast. If you've got a question that you want answered and you submit it to my team and we pick it, we will bring you here to the podcast for our podcast shorts and do a hot seat with you. Where can you submit your questions? Send them to teamburnout2allout dot co. We'll make sure we drop that in the show notes for our podcast shorts. And I hope that you guys find as much value in these shorts as our clients do inside the program.

Melissa Henault [: 00:01:13

Need some effective tactical advice that actually helps you get results and makes a real difference in your life and business? You've come to the right place. If you're finding yourself here today, it means you're getting ready to gain serious traction in your business, rapidly multiply your income and impact, and you're ready to make it happen while living all out. Guys, I'm Melissa Henault, your trustworthy corporate dropout turned 6 figure business burnout turned happy and healthy CEO of a multimillion dollar online business, and you're listening to the Burnout to All Out podcast. On this show, we're serving up innovative growth strategies, simple implementation methods to put them into practice, and action stimulating inspiration tailored specifically for the modern entrepreneur. Let's dive in. Okay. Alright. How can we help you today, Alex?

Alex [: 00:02:16

So, really, my question was just more out of curiosity and out of wanting to know your process. I am trying to build my business alongside of my nine to five. I'm a senior leader in corporate America, and so I know that you have a lot of experience with that. That's exactly what you did. So I wanna know what your process was, how much work you actually put into your business, and how you were able to manage it all with a family and what it actually took. Because I think a lot of what I'm seeing on Instagram and other places with coaches, it's, oh, I went from zero to a million in less than a year, and they're not honest about what it actually took to get there. That's all I wanna know.

Melissa Henault [: 00:02:56

Yeah. So couple things. I actually talked about this last night. I did a business planning workshop for the public, and I talked very candidly about this. First of all, let's talk about your strategy on LinkedIn, then we can get into, like, the real life of working full time and trying to grow another business. When it comes to brand building on LinkedIn when you're working full time, the thing that I think that a lot of people don't realize is that you can really begin building authority without selling in the face of your employer. I don't know what your products and services are, but from a brand building perspective, you can start becoming a thought leader. You can be inspirational, and you can share a lot of great content so that you're seen as the expert without selling.

Melissa Henault [: 00:03:41

Your company doesn't own you. And so that's what I started doing as I started building content that was relevant and the parallel swim lanes of my products and services, but I wasn't selling it. I was just being the thought leader, providing the value. A lot of you in corporate are breaking out to, like, do something that you're doing similarly in corporate as a subject matter expert. Some of you are gonna be consulting. So that's number one. That was my key strategy for brand building without selling. And then as people engaged in the content I put out, I wouldn't get into much detail in the feed.

Melissa Henault [: 00:04:16

I would go straight to the DMs and start asking open ended questions that could triage and lead to my offers. So I never was doing it in the face of my employer because I would have been fired. So that's number one. Number two is knowing who your ideal client is. You can begin strategically growing your network no matter whether you're employed or not. And in that strategic network growth, you can start engaging in open ended conversations in the DMs. And if you're doing this in parallel to creating content in your feed that's building the authority, it's gonna start creating the conversations in the DMs. A lot of my sales month over month when I first started in working in corporate was me being super cognizant of reviewing my content.

Melissa Henault [: 00:05:03

I call it Friday cleanup. Every Friday, I would go back to all of my content for the week because content stays alive a lot longer on LinkedIn than it does the others. You'll see likes and comments days after you've put it in there. I would go back Friday cleanups and personally message and get into conversations with everyone who engaged in my thought leadership, and that began my small business around my nine to five. So those are my fast tips for those of you who work full time. As far as managing it, I talked about this yesterday. LinkedIn was my vehicle to scale my business to a million and nineteen months. Did I burn the candle at both ends in order to do it? Absolutely.

Melissa Henault [: 00:05:44

And whoever is telling you otherwise is full of shit. And if it wasn't for LinkedIn, it never would have happened because I would have been way too exhausted because nothing else was efficient enough with my time. What I said last night is I have never met a successful business owner that just said launching my business was so easy. I just worked a couple hours a week, and it just landed in my lap. That is bullshit. I got up at 4AM. Here's the thing. That LinkedIn checklist was my list when I was working full time.

Melissa Henault [: 00:06:14

Okay? I started to realize what was generating success in my account. So what you need to do is take that LinkedIn checklist, and you maybe need to break it up into quadrants. When you're first getting started and you're working full time, you may wanna commit. Like, this is gonna sound crazy, but this is what I did. I had two kids, was pregnant with a third, working a high end job from four to 5AM or four to 6AM, depending on your time and if you were gonna go to the gym, was when I would work my LinkedIn account. And then I would have a time block during my lunch break if I wasn't taking calls as a manager all day long, where I'd go back to my checklist and do another income producing activity. And then at night, after the kids went to bed, I'm talking about burning the midnight oil when I first started because I was working full time. I would go back in, and here's how I made it work.

Melissa Henault [: 00:07:05

If you take that checklist and you commit, you can break that list into each individual task and look at your calendar Monday through Friday and map out each one as a core promise that you're going to do this activity. This is gonna sound super old school and it's gonna date me, but I literally printed sheets that had the map Monday through Friday of the activities that I needed to accomplish, and I would pull a sheet every week. And as I did it, I would mark it off. So if I grew my network by, like, 80 that week, I would mark it off. If I created my content for five days, I've matched on my content, I'd mark that off. And here's why this is important. Some of you don't recognize you're not being consistent.

Alex [: 00:07:47

Yep.

Melissa Henault [: 00:07:48

And by not being consistent, you're not getting results. And the reason I was able to break free from corporate was that little piece of paper I would track all week long. And sometimes on Friday, I will have done it all. Many times on Friday, I had a kid who was sick, somebody broke their arm and they were in the ER that week, or I had to hire or fire someone. I had to randomly travel, and I didn't get everything done on the list. And this is how committed I was to getting out of corporate though, and this has to become a contract with your significant other If you share the weekends and responsibility with kids. There were weeks where I would literally show my husband my scorecard and say, look, things got crazy this week in my day job, and I wasn't able to follow through with everything I really need to do in order to grow this business on the side. And if we, me and you, want me to ultimately get out of this gig, I need your support on this.

Melissa Henault [: 00:08:39

I need to go to Starbucks for two hours this weekend while you watch the kids so I can make sure I stay current and consistent with what's gonna need to happen to grow my business. So for a year, I got a little fluffy. I I skipped the gym a little bit, and I use that time to work on my business. I don't recommend doing it forever, but I can tell you I can go to the gym whenever I want now. I work whenever I want now. So for me, it was a period of time where there was light at the end of the tunnel, and the only way a business takes off is through momentum. You have to be willing to double down and create the momentum. And so I created the momentum in the bookends of my day and during lunch breaks during the day.

Alex [: 00:09:20

It does make sense. And that's everything that you've touched on, I do except for the time blocking with the checklist. So I'm gonna try that and being more consistent. Because everything else I do, I've had the conversation with the husband. I do all the things on LinkedIn, and I'm helping. I'm a self leadership and human design coach for working moms in corporate. So so it all goes.

Melissa Henault [: 00:09:40

Your content's gonna be beautiful and perfect and in alignment.

Alex [: 00:09:43

And really just focus on, yeah, being a thought leader and build my network and then go from there.

Melissa Henault [: 00:09:49

Last thing I'll say on this, but in your weekly KPIs or your checklist, and it's on the checklist, but you're gonna wanna be following up with all the engagement with the content you're putting out. It's just a matter of holding yourself accountable to the consistency of it and making up for it when you don't do it. Because life is not perfect. Every day is not predictable. And how do you make sure that you stay accountable to it even when you're thrown curve balls? That's gonna give you the success. Thanks guys so much for listening in on today's podcast episode. And I can't wait for you to see my upcoming guest in the next episode. You are going to love this keynote speaker.

Melissa Henault [: 00:10:29

Hey, here's the deal. If you like like this, please subscribe and leave a review. And you want the latest online business growth strategies and exclusive LinkedIn pro tips sent straight to your phone? Text the word update to (704) 318-2285. That is text the word update to (704) 318-2285. Can't wait to see you guys. Come find me over on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, wherever you like to hang. Cannot wait to hear how you are enjoying and applying what you're learning. You guys reach out to me over on social because I love hearing what's resonating with you.

Melissa Henault [: 00:11:15

When you reach out to me and you send me those personal DMs, they really do impact the content I continue to bring forward to you. So again, come find me, melissa underscore hinault over on Instagram, melissa hinault over on LinkedIn and Facebook. Can't wait to see you guys over there.