Ep 156
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Melissa Kellogg Lueck: [00:00:00] Welcome. I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Leuck, and this is the Doing Business like a woman podcast, where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money is made to help you create greater impact and financial freedom, one business at a time.
Good morning. Good morning. Hello friends. How's it going? How are you?
i'm so excited to get to chat with you today for our marketing mini masterclass. And today what I really wanna talk with you about as we dive right in is I have another story for you from my 20 lessons I've learned in 20 years. This this is one lesson, but there's is a bunch of little stories in here. So it's a fun day today and I had so much fun [00:01:00] putting together what I wanna teach you today and the stories I'm gonna tell you today that I'm really excited to, get to share it with you. And I hope it really speaks to you and really encourages you as an entrepreneur, as a woman building a business because it's not always easy.
And so I love these broadcasts where I can come and just give you a power up, right? Just help to build you up, inspire you, give you hope by telling you about what my journey has been like over the last 20 years. Because I think often that's, it's really helpful to kind of see the behind the scenes.
'cause so often we just see the Instagram version of everybody's lives, how they're perfect and beautiful and that's not really the way it always is, right? So my intention in telling these stories is to tell you like it is how like it's been for me over the last. 20 year, 20 plus years now of building a business of [00:02:00] entrepreneurship and the stops and the starts and the failures and the successes. And it's all about experiences and learning and so I'm gonna talk a lot about that today. But in case we don't know each other thank you so much for being here. And my name's Melissa Kellogg Lueck, and I'm the founder and CEO of the Avanti Business Academy for Women.
And I specialize in marketing, coaching and consulting and teaching, and I absolutely love helping women entrepreneurs to really own the value that they possess and communicate it and offer it out to the world in the form of a business and make money doing it. And. So I really love helping women to create greater wealth in all of its forms through entrepreneurship.
So that's what we're all about here. I started this series at the beginning of [00:03:00] this year. And all throughout the year, I'm gonna be sharing 20 lessons that I've learned over my 20 years as an entrepreneur with my own business.
And what I've learned all along the way to hopefully help you as an entrepreneur make your journey easier. And maybe you can learn some things for me from me so you can avoid some of the mistakes that I've made. And fall down the holes and the pitfalls that I have. And I'm sure we will all have our own pitfalls and our own experiences, but if I can help you on your journey, make it a little more joyful, a little easier, a little simpler, a little more profitable then that, then my purpose here has been achieved.
And so that's really what I'm all about. And so, you know, a lot of people when I tell them I've been in business for 20 [00:04:00] years, they're like, oh my gosh, 20 years. How have you done it for 20 years? How have you survived? You know how's that work?
the truth is it really hasn't seemed. That long, like 20 years, like time flies. You know, the saying says, saying goes, time flies when you're having fun. And that's what I've allowed to drive me right, is having fun and really. Learning to enjoy the journey. Now, don't get me wrong, I am also a recovering perfectionist, a recovering people pleaser, a recovering criticizer.
You know, I have always had the inner critic just like we all do. But. since the beginning of my business of having my own businesses, I really wanted to allow fun to drive my work and in the early days, that's really what drove me. Right now, it's different things and we'll get to that, but I was always thinking, you know, what is something [00:05:00] fun that I can do as work that people will pay me for that will also allow me to have a life. That's where my focus was at the beginning of this business. That's how it started out. And, you know, I wasn't at that time thinking big about impact and legacy and all of that, but I had come out of some really hard years in my life really challenging years.
when I started my business in 2005, I was let's see, six years outside of past getting my MBA. I had been working in New York City in the dawning of the internet, boom. And let me tell you, we just worked all the time, just like hustling our butts off. I was young, I was in the early years of my career and just hustling my butt off.
I was taking huge risks, working for startups, working for entrepreneurs. I was single, supporting [00:06:00] myself. I was risking, you know, getting hired and getting fired. I got fired a couple of times. I got laid off. I was working so hard. And at that time it was like, well, maybe it'll pay off, maybe it won't.
But, you know, that's, that was the phase of life that I was in. And so then 9/11 happened, right? And now there was, in addition to all of the risk that I was taking, you know, in my career, now we have the risk of war and, and dying of terrorism. And, you know, the stress of, really just thinking about could my, I go to work and my life end tomorrow, right?
And really not knowing what the future was gonna hold for our country, our world, myself, you know, our area, whatever. that phase of my life was very challenging, as you can imagine. And so the years following that, when I moved back [00:07:00] to Colorado to the safety, after 9/11, I came back to Colorado to the safety of family and the familiarity.
This is my home state, right? My hometown. I knew I wanted to work and to work hard, but not like I had been. And so that's when I began to develop my definition of entrepreneurial wealth, right? Which for me has grown and shifted over 20 years. Over the past 20 years. But what I wanna offer you today, is that as, as an entrepreneur you get to decide and I get to decide and build our own brand of wealth. And I always joke with my clients that the entrepreneurial journey is just as much about personal. Growth as it is about business growth, right? So if you can relate to that, raise your hand, right? It's kind of the personal growth journey we never signed up for, but [00:08:00] here we are, right?
it's also just as much about creating all kinds, all different kinds of wealth, right? As it is about creating financial wealth. Thinking about that and thinking that, I get to choose the direction and the kind of wealth that I create was how it was possible. How it's been possible for me to stick with entrepreneurship for 20 years.
for me, in the early days. once I founded my business in those early days, the wealth I really wanted at that time as a result of having gone through the challenges that I had gone through, the wealth that I really was craving at that time was wealth of experiences and relationships and time freedom.
And money was probably last on that list, right? Like, yes,I knew I had to pay the bills. I was living in the Vail Valley with my. Now husband and which is not a cheap [00:09:00] place to live. But I always knew I could make money. I had a lot of confidence in my ability to make money, and so I was building my business.
It was the early years, and I did all kinds of jobs, right, because I was like, I just want experiences, you know? I wanna be able to be building my relationship, my romantic relationship with my now husband. I wanna be building friendships. And I'm having relationships with closer relationship with my family 'cause now I lived closer to them. So I was doing all kinds of work. I was working, I was building my business. I was working as a freelance writer. I had all kinds of fun jobs. Like one of the fun jobs I had, I was a stringer for Judge Judy, which basically means I would go to small claims court and look through all the small claims filings and find really interesting cases.
And then I would send them into Judge Judy and some of [00:10:00] them, those people would be on air, and that was super fun. So I was just all about fun stuff like that. And I was a hostess at a sushi restaurant. I was a bartender in the summer at a concert venue, and I also worked on the race crew at Beaver Creek ski resort, I did that.
I didn't get paid for that except for in a ski pass I guess that's how I earned my ski pass to be able to ski. And, but I also had time freedom, right? To take my puppy on my new dog on two hikes a day. Spend time with my boyfriend, our friends, and ski and travel. So the kind of wealth that I was creating at that time was in experiences, in relationships, in time freedom, right?
and then after my husband and I got married, and we decided a few years, [00:11:00] couple, few years later to start our family I knew I needed to simplify my business because, and all the different jobs and things I was doing because I knew I was gonna have less time for all of that, right? I was gonna have less time freedom.
So. In that phase of my business, my wealth was came in the work that I was doing. I scaled back all the variety of things and I was focusing mainly on corporate marketing and working for a few larger organizations and doing their marketing for them. And learning my client's industries and developing and publishing content for them.
I really loved the intellectual stimulation which for me was a counterbalance to the extreme challenge and physical exhaustion of motherhood with little kids, right? And so I felt like it was in that phase. [00:12:00] My business was one part of my life and my body that no one else owned. I owned it, right?
I owned and directed the work and what I got paid. And although I was making less revenue, the revenue was lower during that phase of my life, I felt so wealthy because I had my business, right? I felt like I was creating intellectual wealth, experiential wealth. Even though it was less financially, I didn't judge it.
And you know, I know so many of us in our culture, right? We are conditioned to really measure our worth based on our financial wealth. But there really is, especially for entrepreneurs, we get to create so many different varieties of wealth for ourselves. And so, then once my kids started school, got a little older there was less of that physical [00:13:00] exhaustion and, you know, able to sleep through the night and those things.
And I had a little bit more time freedom. I began to think about the next chapter in my business, in my life, in my career, and that's when the idea of making an impact and having a legacy began to be more important to me. I began to think about what is it that I really have a value to offer the world and it was so clear to me. It was experience and if you have studied human design at all you know I had my human design read and I understand it. I don't know how to teach it at all. But what I do know about myself, especially through my human design, is that learning from experience and teaching from [00:14:00] experience is a huge part of who I
I've always been a student in the school of hard knocks. Yes, I do have advanced degrees, but I always tell everybody I learned so much more by experience than going to school and getting degrees. Right. And so I've always lived my life knowing that life is about learning and growing and helping others, and at that phase, it became clear to me that the best way to learn and grow and to help others is to have as many experiences, as much experience as possible as I can. And then learn as much through those experience experiences, and then share that with others. When my youngest, my son started elementary school, I decided the next phase of my development of my business and my career was to share all that I had learned and began to, [00:15:00] to give the wealth of experience i'd amassed over 16 years of working with entrepreneurs and startup companies and 11 years of running my own company. This began my phase of also wanting to create greater financial wealth intellectual wealth and experiential wealth, of course while growing my wealth of relationships and relationships with my family.
At this point this was about 10 years ago, and we had moved. From being in the mountains in Vail, we'd moved back to my hometown where I'd grown, grown up here in northern Colorado. And that was 10 years ago, right? that's the phase I'm in now and I'm still in this phase and I'm finding myself really.
In a phase of enjoying sharing my wealth of experience as a coach, as a [00:16:00] teacher, like this is my zone of genius. This is my flow. This is what I absolutely love, especially working with women entrepreneurs. And I'm also, you know, in this season, in this phase, I am growing my wealth in challenges. I'm growing my wealth in my wealth of capacity emotional, physical, and intellectual capacity to, more rapidly grow my business and grow my financial wealth as I am on a journey and with a goal of creating a business that can make multiple millions of dollars. I know I kind of stutter as I say it, but yeah. I'm growing a business that makes a million dollars a year and then multiple millions of dollars a year, a business that can be an [00:17:00] asset to our family and provide that kind of wealth, you know, generational wealth as well as you know, I guess my value, what I value most in that is that I wanna create wealth, financial wealth in my business through helping other people create their wealth. Right. And so I just love that idea of that cycle, right?
It's like I have these experiences and I offer that and share that to help others grow their businesses and make more money. And as that, that they're making more money than I'm making more money and growing my financial wealth. that is the season that I am in now. I tell you those stories and I talk, I'm talking a lot about wealth today because one of the most beautiful parts of being an entrepreneur, is like I said before, we get to decide [00:18:00] how we define wealth for ourselves, for our business, and wealth in all of its forms, right?
What are all the forms of wealth? I'm sure you could think of half a dozen. The ones that come up for me immediately are, yes, financial wealth, emotional wealth, intellectual wealth, health, wealth, right, relationship, wealth, and any other kind of places in your life where you want to feel and want to be abundant.
And it's okay that this grows and changes throughout the years of your business. I think one of the things that I'm so proud of, with my own journey is that I never made it wrong or right how I was building my business. [00:19:00] I guess I shouldn't say that, never, but for the most part, I have allowed my business. To grow and change with me and allowed myself to grow and change throughout the years, allowed my desires to grow and change throughout the years.
And I think there is so much more enjoyment in that. Right? We are organic beings. Our businesses are organic beings and growth and change is. The constant, right? The only constant is change and it's okay. And so I actually love that because it, it's like the scenery is always changing, right? And and so when you are faced with challenges in your business, in your entrepreneurial journey, just know that those challenges all [00:20:00] have a purpose and they have a purpose. If you allow them to be purposeful, right? They have a purpose that you may, you might not see right now, but that later on down the line, you're going to come to a point and you'll look back and you'll say, wow. That's why I had to go through that and learn that because now this is what it's doing for me.
That those lessons, that learning is doing this great thing for me now. And so let it be okay that your desires, your business grows and changes with you throughout throughout the years. And many people will not understand why you choose entrepreneurship as your thing, right? And they may tell you that it's not worth your time or energy.
That you're gonna fail, which as entrepreneurs we know is the way to success. The [00:21:00] more you fail, the more successful you'll become. Right? But people close to you might not understand, might not support you, but if you're called to be an entrepreneur, I also believe you're called to create your own definition of wealth, and it's not always financial, and that's okay.
Right? Yes. We are in business to make money. That's kind of the definition of making, of, of business is making money. Right? But how much, and what role that plays in your life is up to you. Right? You get to decide where you want your wealth to be. So you get to decide how much wealth and how you wanna create it, whether it's financial, emotional, relationship, health, experiences, time, or any other kinds of wealth that you can think of [00:22:00] and take it from me, someone who's 20 years in.
I wanna encourage you to listen to your gut about the kind of wealth you most desire now 'cause it can grow and change, right? And go for it. I challenge you to go for it with all your heart, mind, and strength and have your own back about about the decisions and the the desires you have and the decisions that you make as a result, I want you to have your own back on those. And I believe that you can create them if you do that right. And I believe if I can do it, so can you. And I'm not done yet, right? I'm not done yet. So I wanna challenge you today to really think about what are all the types of wealth you want now and what is the wealth that you are creating?
Is it [00:23:00] aligned because they're so often, I mean, I can think back in my own journey in times where it wasn't aligned, where there were people in my life that thought my my focus and my wealth should be in one place, but really my heart, my soul was calling me to a different type of wealth. And so when those things aren't aligned, There's that dissonance, right? And, and you're probably not going to feel wealthy, and you're not going to be creating the wealth that you most want. So like I said before, I wanna encourage you to listen to your gut about the wealth that you wanna create. Where's your desire? Make a decision to create it, and then go all in 100%.
And that really is how you create traction and how you create wealth and how you create enjoyment of the journey as well. [00:24:00] So think about am I creating something that someone else wants me to create or am I creating what I most desire and am I having my own back with that? Because it's that desire that will take you so far in your entrepreneurial journey, and it will allow you to see and feel wealthy and feel your wealth all along the way, right?
Because you don't have to wait until some day somewhere with some number in the bank account to feel wealthy. You can feel wealthy right now today, right? And so that's what I wanted to share with you today. This is my own story of wealth. and if I can support you on your journey and help you create the wealth you most desire, I would love to support you as your coach, as your teacher, your mentor.
It would be the honor of my [00:25:00] life. if that's of interest to you, let's talk about it. There is, a link on my website, melissa m kellogg.com, and you can always book a call with me. I would love to chat with you. But I just wanna challenge you today to really take stock of the wealth that you have created, that you are creating, that you are feeling.
Your entrepreneurial journey and encourage you to enjoy the journey. Now while you're on it, it's completely possible because we don't wanna be the bad boss that we left, right?
So, yes. Wealth. You are so wealthy. I am so wealthy. And I'm so glad to be with you here today. I believe in you. I love you, and I will see you right back here again next week. All right, my friends. I'll talk to you then. [00:26:00] Bye.
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