306: Navigating The Peaks And Valleys Of Your Business

Melissa [: 00:00:00

Boy, do I have a special episode for you today. One of my good friends and the spiritual millionaire, Preston Smiles, asked me a couple of weeks ago to come speak in his community and really talk about strategies and the mental game that I've approached for success in business. We talked mindset. We talked business strategy, all the things. And I thought you would love to take a peek behind the curtain of this workshop that I did within his community. So I hope you guys really enjoy this episode and let me know. Share with me in the DMs. Let's chat.

Melissa [: 00:00:36

Would love to know what you learned, what actions you take from this segment. And with that, I hope you guys are out there just living all out. Enjoy this episode. 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 Hennault, 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.

Melissa [: 00:01:39

Let's dive in.

Melissa [: 00:01:48

Let's get started. Preston and I go back about five or six years. He was actually at my mastermind last week doing some activation and facilitation with my mastermind client. So we just found ways to, like, support and serve, and I'm so excited to come in here and work with you guys. I am a self proclaimed corporate dropout. I really climbed the wrong mountain, got to the top of Mount Everest in a leadership role, and had to check my ego at the door with over 200,000 in college debt, the master's in clinical research, a doctorate in pharmacy, and realizing that this is not what I wanna do anymore. That's a huge ego blow, and there's a lot of work that has to be done and untethering and attachment to ego in order to publicly about faith. And so while I was in corporate America, I am a calculated human being at the time, very risk adverse.

Melissa [: 00:02:39

Now I take much bolder risk, but back then, was not willing to just throw everything in the trash can. So I actually started building a business, believe it or not, around my nine to five using the power of LinkedIn. And in the beginning, incognito, believe it or not, I was with a Fortune 500. So if they knew I was actually scaling a business to get out, I would have been fired because it was in the midst of a pretty big recession with the company and just where we were in the industry. So I found a way to match my corporate income leveraging the power of LinkedIn. Faired my boss publicly on LinkedIn. I mean, like, publicly say you're fired on LinkedIn, but I publicly put on LinkedIn after I fired my boss, if that makes sense. So and empower you from going from two years previous when the company was going through a reorg actually, this is relevant to the story today.

Melissa [: 00:03:31

When the company was going through a reorg, I had two kids in diapers and was told during the reorg, congratulations. You still have your job. However, you've gone from Tullah River and you now cover half the country. Oh, and we consolidated the team you led. There's no longer any people in North Carolina or South Carolina where you live. So your work life is is, oh, we're gonna be on airplane four days a week to work with your team. So that was a reality check for me. I was wildly disoriented.

Melissa [: 00:03:59

In the midst in the moment, I thought it was the end of the world, but it actually forced me to think differently, start a business, which fast forward to today, almost seven years later, we closed 4,000,000 revenue last year, and I run a multi 7 figure a year coaching business. And I'm serving my heart's passion and purpose all all because I was brave enough to make a radical pivot when I was in corporate America. So that's a little bit about my background. I've come forward now with multiple coaching programs between LinkedIn and online business scaling and a level mastermind. So that's where I am today. That's been my evolution. And Preston asked me to just come in and talk to you mostly about how I think. And then if we have a little bit of time, I'm happy to answer questions that you have about LinkedIn.

Melissa [: 00:04:48

For those of you who are curious about lead generation over on that platform, it was wildly underutilized at a scale to a million of revenue in less than eighteen months with 600 followers on Instagram. I was about making a million dollars, not having a million followers, And that but it was the most efficient, resistant free, mat availability platform that there is to this day. So I love coaching folks on that. But I wanna spend more time on how I think. So I actually wanted to talk to you about how I think. Now seven years later, running a multi 7 figure a year business and the journey it's taken me on with Nasette and the inner work that I've done. Let's talk about the mindset journey. So what I will talk about today is how do I think I think in cycles.

Melissa [: 00:05:33

And, actually, I don't just think of in cycles. I think in spiral. I think in spiral upwards as we evolve as humans. And that's what I wanna talk about today is these cycles for spirals. I wanna know, like, let's talk about cycles. They're cycles of shit that sometimes we live in for way too long in business, and how quickly we can get ourselves out makes a huge difference in our resilience and growth as a business owner. I think the statistics are starting, like, at eighty percent of business owners close and fail in the first four months. And I actually believe a lot of it has to do with the inner work that's necessary to have the capacity and the resilience to move forward.

Melissa [: 00:06:13

So that's what we're gonna talk about. So let me know. Okay. So who right now like, be bold, be braggadocious. Who right now is in a cycle of crushing their business. Who is in a cycle of being in cloud nine? I call this enlightenment. This was me two years ago. My business went from zero.

Melissa [: 00:06:33

Like, it went from a million to 3,800,000.0 in a year. Like, we literally grew 380%. That was a year of, like, cloud nine. Everything I touched turned to gold. Like, people on the outside would have thought that it just happened. You and I know that's not the way it works, and we're gonna talk about that. Okay. Awesome.

Melissa [: 00:06:49

Yeah. How many of you feel like you are in the cycle of shit right now? Like, you are literally getting roadblock after roadblock, or you're feeling just significant resistant in where you're trying to go right now. Who's feeling a bit of resistant And, Sarah, you're trying to go right now. You're hitting barriers. You're hitting roadblocks, and you're just feeling very challenged. K? I'm here to tell you that is very normal. That was me last year. I was in the cycle of shit, and we're gonna talk about it.

Melissa [: 00:07:20

Okay? If we can prepare for it, it doesn't rattle us. It's all in how we am breaking it. Now how many of you just came out of a cycle of shit? You're actually not on cloud nine yet, but you're like, I'm so glad that that is over. Alright? Because that's where I am right now. I I'm in, like, the stability year of, like, like, last year was crazy. This year's been smooth and steady. Can we just keep it that way? I'll take smooth and steady this year. Right? Anybody there? Okay.

Melissa [: 00:07:49

Audrey keeps getting shit sandwiches. Okay. Well, this lesson is for you today, Audrey. So I'm gonna tell you how I think and take you on some of my journey. All these cycles I just talked about are actually very normal in business. Businesses go through growth, plateau, recalibration. There's epic lows in business, and I want to use the analogy hiking Mount Everest when it comes to building a business. So just follow me on my journey of my analogy.

Melissa [: 00:08:17

Let me talk about this today. What is between one peak and the next mountain peak? Well, like, two years ago when I was on CloudNine, I'm like, woah. Rocket ship. We're even like a mofo. We just jump from this mountain peak to the next one. No. We don't. Actually, in order to get and maybe the next mountain peak is like, let's just call it what it is.

Melissa [: 00:08:39

Because after that year, I called in more. We're gonna talk about this. Well, how do you get to the next mountain peak? There's valleys. There's climbing back up. It's Circuit 2. It's it's never just sitting from one peak and jumping to the next. Am I right? So the view from one peak to the other can look like it's just a jump, just like me last year. I said, oh, we did 3,800,000.0 last year.

Melissa [: 00:09:03

Let's do six and a half next year. What's nearly doubling with revenue? No big deal. We can do that. Like, because I could see I saw the other mountain peak, and I could just jump there. Right? Anybody been there before? Oh, the reality is we have to get conditioned along the way and actually recover at base camp. Anybody follow the journey of people who hike Mount Everest and how much training do in order to actually ascend into the very, very top? Do they even just shoot you to the top, or are there moments of base camps for acclimation before they go to their next spot? So I'm gonna give you some analogy. Her body scaling out Everest physically have to grow and change to acclimate in order to have the capacity to hold what we're actually calling in for the next mountain peak. Am I right? There has to be physiological likely skill, all the things.

Melissa [: 00:10:00

The navigational looks different. And so in order to get that peak, there's gonna be headwinds. There's gonna be harsh conditions. And those headwinds on harsh conditions actually prepare you for the next level. Right? So I want you to think about the challenge and resistance. The unexpected is what's necessary for growth to get to the next level. Some of you, this is a tough love for some of you, for me, flasher. Some of you calling in, you don't necessarily have the capacity to hold.

Melissa [: 00:10:31

You're gonna get it, but the universe is gonna make sure you actually are chiseled through the journey so that you actually have the capacity to hold what you are ultimately calling in. And some of you are calling in what you don't have the capacity to hold, and you're resisting the conditioning that's necessary to get there. Does this make any sense? You're resisting the conditioning, but it's not necessary to hold the future state that you desire. We're Charlotte and I are running into this right now. We hosted a mastermind event last week, and we did some really deep shadow work. And I would say about 20 out of 23 client were ready to embrace it and do the work, and the other three really resisted it. Really resisted doing the hard stuff that's actually necessary in order to unlock them and move them along and release what's keeping them down. Versus the best of the cohort is like, give me my tool belt.

Melissa [: 00:11:33

I know it's gonna be cold. Give me my jacket. I just the process. I've got to go through the hard to get to the next level. Okay. So the thing is I liken up a client to a debt and a rebirth in the client. Okay? The death and the rebirth. Right? I believe that we are constantly, again, a death and rebirth process as entrepreneurs.

Melissa [: 00:11:56

Just like I started off kicking off with you guys with my first death story. What was my first death story as a human being? It was the death of my identity as a corporate American leader. Remember that? And when I was going through it, felt like it literally felt like a physical death. Has anybody been through this? Like, been through just the shit of something in the middle of it. It felt like it truly is. It is a physical death of the identity of who you are. And there's so much resistance that we had to endure to come out on the other side. It was a lot of work.

Melissa [: 00:12:32

I didn't just miraculously come out of corporate and have a new business land in my fucking lap. There was a really uncomfortable death that had to ensue. And, actually, what was even more uncomfortable was the transition period of things you've been often hearing being disoriented before everything comes back and reoriented and in the in the new way. So rebirth, totally different person. Right? It makes sense. So if you're feeling resistance in your business right now, perceived setback, challenges, you're actually I want you to embrace this. Right? You're actually being prepared for your next journey. Because think about this.

Melissa [: 00:13:13

The reality is to get off the next mountain peak, to actually go from where you are to the day to what you truly desire is a climb. You might feel like you're in the middle of a slide because you've got the resistance. You're feeling like this is a slide. I'm going backwards. It's so hard. But humor me this. You're absolutely clean. We closed our books last year at almost 4,000,000 in sales.

Melissa [: 00:13:36

It was the biggest year ever. And on the outside looking in, it could, like, gosh, must be nice. Right? Must be nice. But the reality is if you looked under the hood, which I'm about to do with you guys, you would see so many failures that most people aren't even willing to describe. And the curiosity of looking at these failures, perceived failures that were actually all blessings, that all molded to me in order to have the capacity to hold. And I want you to get curious about these I I got curious about the failures, and I want you to get curious about perceived failures and and setback. Right? And what the blessings are in it. So I want you guys to write this down.

Melissa [: 00:14:22

Okay? I want you to write this down. It's a quote that I'm bringing to you guys. It's not life events that are causing you stress and problems. It's your resistant to the event that make it uncomfortable. And I'm sure Preston goes through this with you guys, but I'm gonna say it. So let me give you a really practical example. Does anybody have kids? Last year, Preston actually came to my live event over a series of an entire two weeks. Believe it or not, parents will probably believe this, every single white space gap I put in my calendar to plan to prepare for my live event was destroyed by the fact that my husband was out of town, and then every single one of those days, somebody was sick, and I had a sick child, throwing up, diarrhea, fever, you can name it.

Melissa [: 00:15:15

There was no space in my calendar to do okay? I get to the final I blocked an entire day, the final meet before my live event. Entire day, I had blocked off. And I was like, thank goodness I have this final day. I have this one day the button up loose ends, and be ready for my live event. And here's the funny thing. What I'm talking to you right now about is a huge piece of my keynote at that live event. How respond to the unpredictable, how you respond to the stress that's thrown at you. And here's what happened.

Melissa [: 00:15:49

It was like the universe wanted to make sure I was practicing what I was preaching. It's 07:20 in the morning. I have three children. K? It's chaos getting everybody out the door before the bus arrives, Getting our lunch and getting our food bags. Every papers are dry. We're trying to get everybody out the door. My seven year old, who cannot stand still, decides to stand up on a soccer ball in the hallway, and he fall and slip. And it was a sliding board to, like, a bar kinda like a barn door door.

Melissa [: 00:16:20

Right? His knee goes straight into this metal, what time do you want to call it, and posture a massive hole in me. Okay? This is the one day out of, like, seven that I've prepared to work on this Linda Miss. So I had a choice in that moment. The choice was to get really pissed off, really frustrated, and leak and I want you guys to write this down. Leak a significant amount of energy, or I get to choose to accept the scenario at face value and move forward. How many of you have leaked so much energy in certain scenarios? Because this isn't the way it was planned. That's not what my business were. And the universe is like, bitch, this is reality.

Melissa [: 00:17:14

Your son has a huge hole in his knee, and he needs to go to the ER. I wanna follow-up on this. In that moment, I could choose to resist, complain, get super frustrated, or actually assess what's going on and take radical action without creating blame or frustration. What did I do though? I immediately said, you're going to the EOF because I'm not waiting at a urgent care where they might triage you for stitches. I might go to three different urgent care before I can get you to the ER. So I made an executive decision to go straight to ER. I'm driving to the ER. My husband's like, that's gonna be a $1,500 payment to show up for stitches.

Melissa [: 00:17:54

You should go to the urgent care. But I very calmly have already made the executive decision. My time was more valuable than spending it going and sitting in a parking lot at 07:30 for urgent cares that don't open up till nine to potentially be seen by ten, potentially be sent to another office for stitches anyway. I had made an executive decision that this is what I was gonna do. There was also a lesson in that. The universe was telling me slow down. You actually don't need all of this preparing for this event. We want you to come into this more intuitively from the heart, from the gut, from what is on your heart and soul and mind.

Melissa [: 00:18:37

Like, there was purpose in being devastation. And every time I plan to work on that event, and I ended up coming to that event with more of an intuitive approach without nearly the preparation, and it went through flawlessly. And so the lesson in that is, like, in your thrown a curveball, you can choose. It's a practice. You can choose it in that moment. What is the lesson in this? How do I not resist it and leak my energy, but just navigate through it? Easier said than done. I know. But I'm gonna walk you through some examples in a bit because I, like, some of you used to play the victim mentality.

Melissa [: 00:19:19

I have lots of sob stories about things that happened to me and why it wasn't mine. Oh, and I'm leaking so much energy on. So my question to you is when you're in this difficult terrain, making the climb where you're getting life's resistance and unpredictable curve balls, are you looking at it from the lens of what skill set is this giving me? What lesson is coming my way? Or are you leaking tremendous energy focusing on why it shouldn't have happened? It didn't. Why it should have gone another way. It didn't. The reality is if we can live in the present moment and accept the present moment at face value, we will not leak so much energy on a day to day basis. Okay. So even when we cannot see the next mountain peak yet, and when we feel resistant for where we're headed, for what we called in, Can we look for the lessons, blessings, and the journey? So I'm gonna share with you guys a couple of examples.

Melissa [: 00:20:23

So before I do, I want again, presence talk to me about how you think. Give you three things I want you to write down on how I think. These are three major principles I live by. K? So the first one is that your heart and mind must be open and expansive enough. So your heart and mind must be open and and expansive enough to encompass, write this down in bold letters, your current reality, to encompass your current reality. So you gotta get rid of the coulda, shoulda, woulda, It coulda had its way. It shoulda happened this way. Don't waste your precious energy leaking the past or projecting the desired future.

Melissa [: 00:21:04

It is what it is. Some of you might not like those words, but it is. Right? It is what it is. So what can I learn from this? Number two, my number two principle is we don't effectively handle the flow of business when we resist the reality in front of us. So we don't effectively handle the flow of our business, the the valley, the resistance, when we resist the reality in front of us. We end up leaking a lot of energy. That's number two. Number three, when you embrace the challenge, and I'm gonna give you a real world example of this.

Melissa [: 00:21:39

When you embrace the challenge, it has become stepping stones to success. So release the challenge. It actually becomes stepping stones to your success. So I'm gonna share with you guys a vulnerable story about my own journey standing on a mountain peak a little over a year ago. We closed out the business. We grew over 350% in one year. And I was naive enough to think we could keep doing the same thing and double our revenue again. So I was standing on the mountain peak and feeling super blessed from the hypogrowth.

Melissa [: 00:22:24

And what I decided to call in was, thank you, god source verse. Thank you. More, please, and give me what I need to hold it. Have you any of you ever felt guilty in a really high season of asking for more? Like, there's a lot of inner work that has to be done there when things are going really well, and you're like, awesome. Give me the capacity and ability and give me more. More, please. So what do you think happened the following year? God said, hold my beer. Well, I should have said something.

Melissa [: 00:23:00

I will take you on a necessary journey for what you just asked for. Because I was on this mountain peak calling in the next mountain peak. Okay. So in January 2024, a little bit over a year ago, I declared well, in my business plan, I said we were getting nearly double, and I declared we were gonna do a dollars in revenue in nine days. Now if any of you who launches, we watches, we had a history of between about seven and eight hundred thousand in revenue per launch. So I was, like, just, like, kissing just, like, kissing the vanity number of saying that I've done 7 figures in a launch. It was that vanity number. I just I really wanted it for no other reason, but then to just say that I've done it.

Melissa [: 00:23:52

Anybody been there? There really wasn't great business logic behind it other than I just wanna say it. Same thing last year was my first six figures, and to my first seven figures. First launch, I set a goal. We're gonna do a million dollar launch this year. We're gonna double in revenue, and we're gonna do million dollar launch of this year. We're just gonna do more of the same, and it's gonna give us the results we're looking for. What happened in my first launch in January of this past year? Anybody wanna guess what happened? Did we hit our million dollar launch? No. We went backwards.

Melissa [: 00:24:25

We went backwards. We did about less than a half a million. The launch went sideways. Everything that could've wronged, gone wrong, went wrong. We even our SMS text messaging got hacked and was getting ransom notes from hackers. We got blocked off on LinkedIn, my website. People couldn't click on it. Like, the marketing and the ads went sideways.

Melissa [: 00:24:49

It was man. Okay? So this was after I said, give me more, please. Give me the capacity to hold it. This is when the universe says, well, you have a lot of lessons to learn before you fix that. Where are all the steps and checks and strategy and managing your numbers if you're gonna go this level? I gotta disrupt a whole bunch of stuff in your business and stir you up in order to increase your IQ as a CEO so that you actually have the capacity to manage what you're asking for. Because right now, you actually aren't running and knowing the numbers in your business like you need to in order to operate at that level. You can't run a 8 figure a year business without knowing down to the team, very specific metrics in your company, and accountability with people in your team. Okay.

Melissa [: 00:25:36

So could I have resisted the fact that we did not hit our launch in January? This is gonna sound so effed up to some of you guys. But when this happened in January, I it was a twofold of emotion. There clearly, there was a level of disappointment, but there was actually also this wild sheer full body excitement. I know that sounds crazy, but I've been in this for a while. This is probably my first rodeo of things not going away. I wanted them to, and I will walk through this. Full body excitement and fear because I know that this year is gonna be nothing but a bunch of lessons to prepare me for what I called in. So here I was, and I will say I had my ugly girl cry moment on the bathroom floor.

Melissa [: 00:26:26

Like, I moved through the emotions of the disappointment and also recognized as a business owner that was much that's going to have to be learned this year, and I could either pull my big girl panties up and be watchfully curious with all the curveballs I was about to receive where I could bottle up and resist and play the victim and say stuck where I was and not manifest what I was calling. So recognize at the beginning of the year, oh, shit. I've got a lot to learn if I wanna go in this direction. So yeah. I hit the million dollar for watch at all last year. I hate to burst the bubble of the story, but I actually never hit a million in the revenue in any one of the single launches last year. But there were so many blessings I wanna share with you. So we went into our second launch.

Melissa [: 00:27:19

We did 700,000. We just about matched of our launches the year before. Me internally, feeling like an absolute failure. Have any of you ever created arbitrary goals in your business that you set that were arbitrary and then attached much of your own identity and self worth to it? So just follow me on this journey with this story. So I'm like, I have this goal. I've proclaimed it to not just my team, by the way. I'm a business mentor. I have run mid level and high level business mastermind.

Melissa [: 00:27:49

I have a lot of eyeballs on me. And I think one of the best ways to hold pressure and accountability in yourself is to own it publicly. So what did I do all year? I all get publicly follow me. I'm shooting for this. This is what I'm aiming, and I have the humility to actually share every launch, what I've learned, and how I didn't hit my goal. And this actually is just a little for me to become the ultimate mentor and actually really grounding me and reminding me of the challenges my clients are running into, that it's not always a walk in the park, and we don't always hit our goal. So I go through the year, and here's the funny thing. I called in more, please, And I set the arbitrary number for my business plan of a million revenue.

Melissa [: 00:28:35

When we I felt like a failure. We closed about our books for the end of the year. So much stress on my body. Like, all year. Now I was curious. We'll talk about this. Looking for all of the lessons. I knew it was gonna be a tough year, but I really beat myself up for not hitting my goals knowing it was a necessary growth phase for me.

Melissa [: 00:28:53

But here's what's funny, and I think some of you guys can resonate with it. We finally closed your books last year and looked at the company. We grew another 37% last year. The whole year was a growth year. But I was so focused on the vanity number of this one individual way that I was measuring my business that I missed the beauty and the fact that we were continuing to scale. I never even saw it or applaud the team. All I just saw was failure, failure, failures. Lesson in that is being careful what you measure.

Melissa [: 00:29:27

We're gonna talk about that in a couple of minutes. Now here's the thing. And, again, I asked you this, but I'll ask it rhetorically. Like, how are you measuring success in your business? And, like, question it. Why and how to quantify? That's really important. One of the big lessons I learned last year was, holy cow, we grew 37 in revenue. But one of the reasons I felt like such a failure was I didn't eat my million dollar launch goal, and my profit margins went down significantly. I think this is a huge problem in the online coaching space where people will spout out numbers and revenue, and they're not transparent about their margins and how much they spent.

Melissa [: 00:30:07

So for those of you who track your numbers, in 02/2023, I had a 25% profit margin, which in the coaching space with a team is actually really healthy. 25, 30 percent. When I closed my books last year, like, brace yourself, my margins were 8%. Okay? I've spent a ton of money on ideas that were less than for the year of what we didn't need to do and what we did need to do. So there's a good ending to this that I wanna share with you guys, and I'm gonna take you guys through an activity here in a second. Let me take you into the shifts. Q three, I was thinking margins do this. Anybody else experience that in your own business, tracking your numbers and seeing your mark go in the wrong direction? And you're just like, something has to give, something has to give.

Melissa [: 00:31:02

I have to do something different, have to think radically different. Doing more of the same is not working. Putting more money into doing the same is not working. Clearly, to scale is not a good more of exactly what I've been doing. So what is the lesson? So what happened is in q three, I got really curious with, like, okay. I'm learning a lot. Well, now I'm getting the return I was looking for, and I need to grow and make strategic shifts as the CEO. I had to evolve as the leader of the company first.

Melissa [: 00:31:38

I had to start thinking and acting and learning like an 8 figure CEO before the business was going to come match me and before my team was going to with my expectations of growth. And that is why in January of this past year, it was a whole body feeling of like, oh, shit. This is gonna be a year of learning, and it's gonna be hard. And I've gotta keep my eyes open, and I have to be aware for all the lessons. Anybody had years like that, moments like that? Just, oh, there's no way around this but through it and doing the messy work being called of me. So I made this made strategic moves. We shifted in how we are doing ad analysis. Now, again, we're a big company now.

Melissa [: 00:32:24

We spent a lot of money on ads. We were not tracking the metrics on it. We weren't holding anybody accountable to it. You can't run a multimillion dollar a year company and not track down to the t, DPL, cost acquisition, clicks per read, all the things. Like, I had to grow as the CEO and literally build a dash, which is not my comfort zone of accountability on all the metrics, painstating. I had to build KPIs and accountability for my team. Up until then, we've been able to all just focus on what the single goal of sales, but there was no through line of accountability for everyone on my team on what their performing indicators were and how their work contributed to the bottom line of the company and how their work impacted the profit margin and the efficiency rate of the company. So the bottom line is I had to learn, and I had to elevate my expectation of how the company was going to operate before the rest of the team was gonna follow me.

Melissa [: 00:33:33

So what I actually had to do, I had to evolve. And some people on my team were, like, holding themselves up by the bootstraps and said, I'm here to grow with you. I'm here to be more accountable. You're telling me that I need to be tracking certain numbers based on performance of the company based off of my role. Game. I wanna be held accountable. I wanna see the needle move. Other people, they're like, I don't want any accountability.

Melissa [: 00:33:57

I was only working half the time you were paying me. I'm fucking out. Like, I don't want there to be a magnifying glass on what I'm doing. So what happened last year with a massive disruption organization with the company? I had to raise my frequency of how I was operating and what I was expecting of my team in order to raise the frequency. We don't just move from one frequency to another without chaos in between. Am I right? The harmonics, and we'll show you this video. People on my team and clients had to choose if they wanted to move up in frequency or bounce out of line and lead. And so I had to be okay with this, and it was a massive growth mode for me, getting the military launching performance metrics, creating strategic hires within the company, strategic buyers that were really uncomfortable.

Melissa [: 00:34:53

And I'm here to tell you I had to come to the team and say, I'm raising my expectations. This is where we're headed. Are you game? It's gonna be hard. You're gonna have to learn. And I kept a really awesome key talent, and we all for the people. Now I'm here to tell you you're like, okay, Melissa. What's the end of the story? We're just now finishing our financials for the end of the February, and Charlotte is here to attest that we are absolutely based off of our current numbers and the launch we have next week, we are exceeding our revenue goals for the first quarter and exceeding probably 30% profit margin. So we went from 8% at the end of last year to nearly 38% turning it around in the first quarter of this year.

Melissa [: 00:35:40

Now what I thank you. And the reason I'm really off, like, sharing you guys warts and all, like, the underhood and the ugliness of it, is the reality is if disruption haven't happened, if we had continued to do what we had always done and just gotten, like, fairly similar result, would I have ever find anything that's different? No. I actually called it in and said, I want more. And the universe said, awesome. But it's gonna be a long journey of growing your IQ and organizationally how you're running your company, and I'm gonna need to throw you all these curve balls to make sure you put these systems and processes into place or you'll never have all thought of the 8 figure CEO you desire to be. So I had a choice to resist what was coming my way or embrace and look for the learnings and the changes in what I needed to do. Okay. So this will ultimately happen if you're looking at scaling a business and you've got one or two or three people working with you and you scale.

Melissa [: 00:36:52

And this is another rate leading key factors of growth as entrepreneurs with the lack of leadership, the lack of knowledge and how to, like, grow and mentor. So I wanted to show you what has to happen in order for it from a harmonics perspective. It's a video of rice, and it's really wild because the rice is just operating at a certain frequency, and then you're gonna watch as they turn the frequency up. And as they turn the frequency up, every time you'll see them turn the frequency up, what happens between one frequency and the next high frequency? Mass disruption and chaos until the rice find its way to the next and the rice that can't find its way to the next frequency, where does it go? It bounces off. You have to be prepared as a leader in your company that if you raise the vibration in your company, it's not gonna be a smooth path. If you're gonna raise the vibration, you're gonna raise the expectation in the company. You're gonna create disruption, and it's gonna be up to the team if they decide to move up with your new frequency or bounce off. Now this is just one of my examples of lessons in business.

Melissa [: 00:38:00

I'm gonna get let you guys think about your lessons in just a second. So you guys do you get the gist with how as you raise frequency, the higher the frequency, there was a constant shift. There was a constant chaos before order. I just want you to recognize and honor the chaos that's I lovingly call organized chaos before new order. It's a necessary disorientation or a necessary reorientation to who the team was becoming. And then my journey up the mountain as reorientation and a rebirth as to who we're becoming. And what I wanted to share with you guys, I'd love you to a quick exercise, a quick exercise in you reflecting on where there's been disruption in your path and in the thick of it, it felt like a death. It felt like the end of the world.

Melissa [: 00:39:01

I gave you a scenario from corporate America. Preston's not sure about, like, that first company I launched and scaled on LinkedIn was attending to a direct sales company. And in a couple of years, they were actually after me with a lawsuit trying to tell me that they owned my personal brand, that I couldn't have my own personal brand. This was another journey in the midst of what felt like complete debt. And what press and pushed me on was, this is your chance to step into your power with a leap of faith and 100% own your personal brands and drop that blankie, that thick neck with ten ninety nine pounds. And that's just another example of what felt like sheer end of the world that pivoted into wild success that wouldn't have happened otherwise if I hadn't been put in that corner and made a choice. So I wanna give you guys two or three minutes to to think about. I want you to just think for a minute, reflect, and I would encourage you to do this literally throughout your entire life.

Melissa [: 00:40:05

I sat down and did this and found about seven different points in the past twelve years where I got major resistance. And on the back end, it it heavily served. Another great example is when my business was first hacked. Hackers were sending invoices to client. My social accounts got hacked. My bank accounts got hacked. Did it feel like it was the end of the world when I was in the toilet? Yeah. But guess what? I hadn't made $20,000 yet, and every single password to my name was the same.

Melissa [: 00:40:44

And God was like, look, bitch. You can't have the same password for everything if you're gonna be making millions of dollars. This is ruthless medication. Let me throw you this curve ball so you can straighten that shit out. I want to view your resistance as blessing as f tough as that sound, and where you have resistance in the past to show you evidence for how it has served you. So I'm gonna let you guys just journal on that. Bottom line is we have to honor the transition period in between. That's the orientation that's necessary to sculpt you for who you're becoming.

Melissa [: 00:41:24

And the quicker we can refrain from resisting it, but actually embrace it, the quicker we'll learn our lesson and evolve to what we're calling in. Alright, guys. Well, I hope that this was helpful. Would love to stay connected. And there's one thing that we value the most is our time. So thank you for your time today and listening in. And I hope you guys can gather some nuggets and it makes a difference for you. Alright, guys.

Melissa [: 00:41:49

Thank you.

Melissa [: 00:41:53

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. Hey. Here's the deal. If you 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.

Melissa [: 00:42:32

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. 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.