We recently connected with Melissa Dlugolecki and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Melissa, thanks for joining us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

I think happiness is related based on how you’re, how you relate to your business, not onto the result.

I found my way into the industry by committing to the process, detaching from the outcome. I always had a story and a mission that I just wanted to help people. And I thought you either cared about business or you cared about people that led me to be six figures of debt.

High school educator, a bereaved mom. I mean, it didn’t lead to being a bereaved mom, but at the time I looked around realizing this belief, like what was that? I’m a bereaved mom. I’m six figures in debt and I’m working around the clock literally seven days a week for my particular role as a high school athletic director, working nights, working weekends.

And I realized that my limiting belief was stopping me from actually helping people. So I went into education cause I just wanted to help people, but I didn’t have the time or financial ability to do that. I was burned out and I was exhausted.

And so when I began my business, slowly, coaching and holistic health and mindset, which was really a lot of the work that I had done from my daughter passing away, she died of a sick gut. And I began studying gut health and realized I had a sick gut. I didn’t even know.

And I was taking Tums and acne medicine and anxiety medicine and all these things to treat the symptoms of a sick gut. So my work really first started in gut health and mindset work. And what I realized is I really understood marketing, branding and messaging and how to build a movement.

And that movement led to a seven figure business, all organically, not a lot of followers. And so I think I’m really proud of my willingness to take risks and look stupid. Like I remember being very nervous on those first Facebook lives and I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I did it anyway.

My work then evolved into really looking at what problem am I solving for clients. So I realized my clients didn’t need me to coach them on their messaging, marketing, branding, landing pages, lead magnets, social media content. They just wanted it done for them.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

So I built a team of 80 contractors now and we do it for our clients. So I consult them on the strategy and then my team does the services. They create the landing pages, they create the media, they post it for them.

And so I think we’ve really created a well-oiled machine. That’s an integrity that serves like no other firm or agency. I don’t really love the name agency cause it doesn’t really do us justice, but the agency slash firm that you’ve seen out there.

We’re really committed to authenticity. We don’t do plug and play. I don’t believe in plug and play funnels.

I don’t believe in plug and play offers, plug and play communities really work with each individual to get to know their unique brand, their unique messaging, their, all the things so that we can represent them deeply. I think I’m very proud of the types of humans. I think I’m probably most proud of our client retention and team retention.

Our clients stick around, our team sticks around. We grow our team members’ work. We grow our clients’ work.

We do not have turnover, to a point where like, you know, my coach would probably say you can probably up your prices, but not necessarily here doing that. And yeah, so I think, you know, really standing for authenticity, possibility, service, like service and like seeing the human, I always say it’s not entrepreneurship, it’s human chip. And so like holding that at the core of everything we do.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

I would say the most effective strategy for growing clients, my current clientele, has been client delivery.

Like just doing such a good job. I think so many people put efforts into marketing or branding and all this, but then they don’t have onboarding systems in place. They don’t have client delivery touch points.

They don’t have strong relationships since they lose clients and then spend a lot more time getting more clients to only lose clients. Again, we keep our clients and we get referrals from clients. And a lot of times our clients will level up with us.

So that has been probably the most effective strategy. And I think being authentic, just staying true to who we are. We are not trying to speak to everybody.

We’re not here doing perfect photo shoots and designer bags and high heels as a thing of branding. That’s not branding to us. Branding is what is authentic about you and how do we bring that alive and all five touch points of a sales funnel.

I think all five touch points are very important. So I think that has been our biggest thing in terms of, you know, a story and a lesson. Those kind of go hand in hand.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I spoke on this recently on stage, but losing my daughter Leyden and understanding what it’s like to show up when it’s not convenient to show up when it doesn’t feel good to show up when you don’t get what you want to show up when you’re unattached. And showing up through what I call the burn and all of the fire definitely would be a story that I think just capitalizes what I brought into entrepreneurship. So the way I showed up in grief is how I show up in business.

And so that story from my past is so intertwined, especially now where my book launch is so intertwined with my business. And I think the lesson that I had to unlearn and I share this related to grief, was that I think we all walk around with a subliminal, very subconscious, not intentional entitlement where we think that we are just going to get something because we put the posts up or because we have an offer because we have the landing page. And I had this moment after I lost my daughter Leyden where it was recognizing we’re not entitled to anything, but we’re worthy of everything.

So for me, it was, I’m not entitled to a healthy child, but I’m worthy of one. And now how am I in radical responsibility for everything in my life to recognize? Yes, I’m worthy of it, but I’m not entitled to it. So I have to go create it.

And I see this a lot as people will fall into a, why didn’t this work? Well, instead of falling victim to that, it didn’t work. Where are we responsible to look at the data, look at the feedback, look at it all. One of my businesses didn’t even launch that I thought was the best idea.

And because I looked at the feedback, it is now my highest level offer, like the biggest part of my business, just from looking at the feedback. And a lot of people would have quit there. So those all kind of intertwined together in terms of grief and entitlement and worthiness and how we show up in the burn.

And I think that my personal story is a huge factor in how, you know, everything that I create in business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://speakingofmelissa.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melissadlugolecki/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melissa.dlugolecki
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MelissaDlugolecki
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/show/5TUVs02BBD1SqFa9mE67EN?si=a0ea388c9b684796

Image Credits

All images are owned by Melissa Dlugolecki