Why It Is Important To Follow Your Calling | DM Agency Q&A | Avi Arya | Mellissa Dawn |

If you're marketing, if you don't have self confidence, why would people have confidence in you? Just like the big brands out there, they have core values. You need to figure out your core values and align your business and your messaging around those core values. Even as a coach with all the years of experience, you still need to coach because how are you going to keep going to the next level?

Hi, my name is ABHI Arya. Father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, Asrinka racer, turn hotelier, then marketer and founder of Internet Moguls.

What up, Internet Moguls?

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you're all doing well. Thank you for coming. We have a special guest and I'm now going to invite her online. Melissa dawn, welcome to the Internet Moguls masterclass. Quickly give us a little bit of a background about who you are, where you come from, and we love to see you of your life, all of that. And then we go into Q and A.

Okay. My background, so I always wanted to study. I wanted to do a PhD in psychology and my dad was like, no, as long as there's capital in the world, you have to study business. That's your maternal instincts. So I studied business. I got my bachelor's of commerce. I did everything right. I worked my way up to VP marketing. And I was never happy. And I was always hanging out in HR and helping out with talent management.

Really?

And then after I got my second divorce, I'm like, you know, my professional life is going well, my personal life, not so much. And I was a single mom at the time and somebody recommended that I see a life coach. And I'm like, a life coach? What's a life coach? They're like, you know, somebody that helps you to get clear on who you are and to bring that forward into the world. So I did my Google research, I found a life coach. I signed up for a six month program. I had no idea what I was getting into. And she started me off with these exercises that were very out there and it was weird, but I'm like, I need to do something different so I'm just going to trust her. And within six months, I was in a totally different place and I was sharing all these exercises with my friends and in six months they were in a totally different place. I'm like, wait a minute, there's something here. And I want to share these tools with everybody. So I did my coaching certification. At night, I started building my business. And my plan was when I had enough tools, clients, I would leave. But you know, when you start doing something you really love and then you're at your job and then your boss just frustrates you a bit too many times. So I quit ahead of schedule and within six months I had made up my VP marketing salary.

Oh, wow. Oh, wow. Fantastic. So what could, what would have normally taken 10 years in the driving the corporate ladder, doing your own following your own passion, you know, maybe it took six months. But I'd also like to draw, you know, sort of put a perspective to this and in a question format, 10, 15 years of hard work to, you know, to go to a level VP salary and then six months to be able to do this. If somebody is today wanting to say, okay, I'm going to quit my job as well, or I'm never going to do this, it's going to take six months for me as well. What I'm trying to understand is all the learnings that happened while you were doing your job or understanding people, understanding cultures, understanding workplace insecurity, ego, you know, all of those things that you saw with the seniors all over, maybe an amalgamation of all of that helped you become a better coach. So no experience goes based, would you.

Say that 100% I was a VP of marketing, but it's very different to market for other people versus marketing yourself. Right? But I still had the background. I was still in the industry, so of course it helped me. I still had a lot of connections and I used these connections to build my business. So yes, you, nothing you do is ever lost. It always comes back somewhere somehow.

I love that. I was interviewing somebody a couple of weeks ago. They said in fact a few days ago, and the gentleman, Jason Miller, he was working for Microsoft, he worked for Apple, he worked for all the companies at the marketo the marketing, you know, wizard there. When he started his own company, he said, I should have done it earlier. And I said, what, what advantage did you find while you were building your own company? What advantage from your previous life or as an, as a, as a person who was doing a job? He said, I knew so many people. He said my network brought in all the clients. So starting afresh and you know, versus being part of a community in a job setting, everything helps and nothing goes to waste. Thank you. Thank you for acknowledging that. Because sometimes what happens is entrepreneurs see one side of a story jump in and like, hang on, why is it not working for me? So I just like to sort of reinforce some of those important elements. So, Melissa, I want to talk about various subjects and so One of them is you make up your mind that I want to become a coach. You did your certification at night, which means that when you want something and there's a calling from the heart. Now, the calling of the heart is mostly in movies, in YouTube videos, in Facebook ads, is romanticized that, you know, everything falls into place. Once you find your calling in your heart, does that mean life becomes easy and smooth and effortless and you don't have to work hard over whatever or. Because from what I'm understanding is when you actually decided to follow your calling, you already had a day job, and then you had to put in night hours at night to be able to do your coaching. So it's stressful and you're sleepy and so many things that are. So tell us about those months. Once you say, yes, I want to do it, does it automatically become easy or becomes difficult before it becomes easy or it never becomes easy and you have to just deal with it?

You asked really good questions. And, you know, I never even thought about this until you just asked me. So, you know, a lot of my clients come to me and they say, help me find my passion. Help me. And what I always say is, follow the energy that excites you, and that will bring you to the next step and the next step and the next step. So coaching excited me, so I followed that energy and I took those classes. So while I was taking those classes, I was super excited. You know, I remember because I was a single mom at the time, and I came back after my first coaching weekend, and someone said, well, did you have a hot date or something? So I'm so happy. I'm like, no, I was doing my coaching class because I was feeling, you know, as if I had met the person of my life, Right? So, yes, I was very happy. But then I'd go back to my job, and I would feel my energy going back down. So it's important to pay attention to what fuels you and what drains you so that you can bring in more of your life, of what fuels you, and to decrease what drains you. So, of course, it was still a struggle. And, you know, life is always challenging. Even if we had our business and we all had to reinvent ourselves again, right? So life is always full of ups and downs. And someone told me once, life is two steps forward and one step back. And I believe that, but it's what you do with that step back, right? So like you were saying, like, you. You know Fred Kaufman, he was a professor at mit. He's on the board of advisors of Google. And he wrote some great books. He says you can either play victim and say, forgive my language. Oh shit, why is this happening to me? Or you can be a player and say, oh, fertilizer, how do I use this to make me grow? So whenever you have those moments that are not easy, how do you use this to make you grow? And you bring it forward.

Wow, I've never heard that before. That is fantastic. I'm going to remember that what fuels you. Follow that it'll take you to the right direction. And secondly, instead of saying, oh, what happens? Say oh, fertilizer, I can use this for, you know, because so perspective how you look at things. Awesome. So things, things. Once you choose a calling. I like this. You must understand that it's not an instant switch because whatever you're doing in your 10, 12 hours of your day, you will have to maybe put in extra time to then follow your calling. Because you call it the universe or you call it responsibility for the self, you have to earn it. So if you want that too, it'll take more time. So either nights or weekends. So you do sacrifice. Once you get all of that. And then most people say, I'm going to jump. Okay, I've got my coaching degree and I'm going to jump. When they get their coaching degree and they jump, they realize, hey, you know what? I don't have any clients. And so my money stops coming in. So what would be Your advice? Have 6 months money in the bank, a year worth money in the bank, or start coaching on the weekend before you leave your job. What is a smooth transition? If there is any.

I would say it's different for everybody. So I had hired a coach at that time and she told me, jump and the net will follow. Was she right? Yes. But I was a single mom and when I did make the jump, I did it prematurely. I didn't have that money on the side, but I did have clients and I knew what worked. The first six months were really rock and roll. And my mortgage was due on the 24th of each month and somehow always around the 22nd or 23rd, I would have like a huge amount of money to come in that would cover the mortgage. But up until that came in, I was always like, oh my goodness, what did I do? Did I make mistakes? So it was a very difficult first six months and I would not, I wouldn't recommend it to people unless you have the stomach for that or you. Some people enjoyed that thrill. I didn't. Especially as a single mom. So I mean, I don't, but then again, that's what fueled me to go out and market myself heavily to get my clients. So there's good and bad in the story. It's whatever makes you comfortable. If more money on the side makes you comfortable, I think the safest way is working to build your business. But you can only do that for so long because you can't pull an elastic band in two directions. Eventually it will break, right? At one point you do have to make jump. So what do you need to be comfortable to make that jump? And that's different for everybody.

Got it. That makes perfect sense. And kudos to you to pull that off. I can imagine a mortgage deal and waiting for the client to make that payment. Oh my God. That. Those would have been thrilling days at least. Okay, so now you start your coaching business. What? How do you be the VP of marketing? You know how to market yourself. But you did say that it is different to market products and services with multi million dollar brands versus it is to market yourself. When an individual, when a human being, a coach, we're all we, not we are brands, but then we human beings first. And we, you know, we don't consider ourselves as a Coke or a Pepsi or whatever when we market those brands. How much of my own inner insecurities, self love and all of those things come into play when I go out there and say create my own marketing campaign?

Everything comes into play. That's why the more you work on yourself, the more confident you are, the more your marketing and sales will succeed. Because people feel that confidence, right? If you don't have self confidence, why would people have confidence in you?

Right. I love that. I love that. If you don't have self confidence, why would people have confidence in you? And how do I build that self confidence?

Well, it's not, I mean by working on yourself, you know, therapy, coaching, healing, whatever you need to do, but always working on yourself. So every time something triggers you, that's a roadmap of something you need to heal. So when something upsets you, frustrates you, look into that and say, okay, why is that upsetting me and frustrating it and go deeper. And if you can take that and every time heal yourself, then slowly, slowly you're healing your wounds and you're starting to become more confident in yourself.

Right? So would you say things like working out, meditation, also reaching out to more clients, you know, practicing that to say, you know what, hey, once you start getting clients, you start feeling confident that yes, I can do it and you Brought in the role of. While you're in the. Before you got into the coaching program, you had a coach. Do you still have a coach?

100%. I tried not having a coach, but even as a coach with all the years of experience, you still need a coach because how are you going to keep going to the next level? And I think this is why my clients stick to me because I'm always taking another course or another something. I'm always growing personally and professionally. And then my clients follow me because as much as I, they can only grow as much as I can grow.

I love that guys, all of you people, how many people just got a bulborn moment right there? Every coach, every entrepreneur, everybody who is taking life. You could take your clients to the next level, you could take your students to the next level. You take your, your company to the next level. As a boss, as a boss, as a supervisor, as a manager, you're always managing people. And unless you have. So they're here, people are here, about 100 plus people. We should have more people joining in. They're all part of our coaching program. And every. That's what I have always said. I've got three coaches right now and I, I did not have them till before this year. I had one coach and for different elements of my life and, and I don't have any regrets. But when somebody said what was the one thing that you did late? I said was to have regular coaches, you know, not just go for coaching classes or short courses, but have regular coaches who keep me accountable on what I want to do on a regular basis. So thank you for, thank you for saying that. So I want to break it down in terms of how much do you work on yourself like internally and how much do you work on like, you know, creating a course infrastructure, new pricing strategy, new Facebook strategy between both of those things.

Well, the difference, your business evolves, right? So working on yourself personally. Well, every single day I have my morning routine. You know, you mentioned meditation. So I always start my day, I have an hour just to feel myself. Just because. Just like you need to charge a cell phone, you need to feel yourself. And when you're your best self, then you can handle whatever's going to come during the day, right? So my morning routine is meditation, yoga, journaling, visualization. That's daily and how often. So like. So yes, I do have a coach. I do also work with an energy healer. So I see each of them once a month. And I also see an acupuncturist balance our energy So I do each of these once a month. So. So that's in terms of my personal. Every weekend I'm super active. So I'm either depending on the weather, biking, skiing, hiking, being in nature, and during the week, I do what I can. I mean, sometimes it's more than others, but I try a minimum of walking, 30 minutes a day because physical activity is really good for you. So you always have to start, you know, oxygen mask on yourself, taking care of yourself, because the way you show up in, the energy you have is going to impact the people around you. So now with your business. So when I started my business, I would say I was putting 70% of my time in marketing and 30% of my time in actual clients. And now maybe I put 10% of my time in marketing and 90% of my clients. But this is 10 years later.

Sure. Can you just repeat that? How much was it before and how much is it now?

So I would say that it was 70% marketing in the beginning, and now it's 10% marketing. Because now my clients. It's word of mouth, of course. I'm just doing it to keep a little bit of myself out there. But truthfully, I mean, the word of mouth just continues. When you give a good service, people become your ambassadors.

100%. So what is a good service? Is it what I think it's a good service? Is it a curriculum? I find a coach in the market, and I see that that coach is the best in the world. I take that coach's program. I understand their psychology. Most people are doing that. They're going to the best coaches in the world. It could be Tony Robbins. It could be anybody. In different somewhere there's a similar program, and we start working with that. Right. And then you finally find your own feet. There are some people who say, you know what? Maybe my mess is my own message. You know, whatever I've gone through in life, I'll help other people not to go through or go through the same thing with ease. I'll handhold them when they're going through that journey. Then there are other coaches who have no idea where to start from. So is there a. What. What kind of format should there be, you know, in this regard?

Very good questions. Again, it's unique to everybody. And I have heard, may your mess become your message. And I would say that's kind of where I started. Kind of, because being the CEO of your life, the name of my company, because I never felt. I felt like I had very well, you know, your parents do things the way they think is best. But what is best for them is maybe not what is best for you. Right. So they did everything. They loved me, they had their best intentions, but their way of thinking was very different than mine. So I didn't feel I could follow my passions. And it took me a long time to unprogram, to be able to figure out who I am and what I wanted to do and to bring that forward. So now when I tell people I help them become, steal their life, that's what I help them to do, right? So my message did become my message. And, you know, just like the big brands out there, they have core values. You need to figure out your core values and align your business and your messaging around those core values. So my business is based around my three core values, which I chose are real, like down to earth, brave and fun. So I tried to put that into my colors and my images and my communication, even in my clothes. You know, when you start shopping your brand, you have to start thinking, am I displaying my values?

So fun, brave. I love these two. Fun and brave. I just love it. Fun, brave. And what was the third one?

Real brave and fun.

Real brave and fun. I am who I am. Real, brave and fun. And then everything in your messaging, your color, everything resonates that. I love that. That's a beautiful strategy. Now tell us, Melissa, you know what? Well, you know, I wanted to dig down, dig deeper into the. How do you serve better? Like you said, when I serve better, when I do better with my clients, I get more clients, right? So there are different ways of thinking like this for a coach and for people who are in the coaching. One is, I'll give more time. I'll promise a certain level, but I'll go beyond my call of duty and I'll give more time to every student. But then that also means that sometimes that you don't let your students or your clients do the work themselves, and then they get dependent on you. And I've seen that throughout the years that sometimes people just, you know, you, you. You withdraw those additional hours and they don't do anything. So is there a right mix? And how should. How do you deal with that 100%?

So again, feel of your life? And the way I was trained, I went to the coaches training institute. We are taught to empower people, right? We don't want them depending on us. That's not healthy for them or for us. And it's very important to set boundaries. No, if I say I'm going to give a 45 minute session. I'm not going to give you an hour because me respecting my boundaries is helping you respect your boundaries. Right. If I'm accepting myself, then I'm going to. I did that in the beginning. I made the mistake. I was so burnt out after one year of coaching because I was always overextended. And I'm like, wait a minute, what am I doing wrong? Where do I have to put boundaries? Because if I can't be my best self, how can I help my clients their best selves? So, no, you know, of course you can give more, but in little things. So, I mean, I think the best gift you can give your client is you being your best self and you being very present with the time that you spend with them.

Got it.

If you're tired and you're showing up and you're not really listening, how can you really be helping them? So do your best. And, you know, I try. I follow the four agreements. I don't know if you're familiar with the four agreements.

I have. Yeah, yeah, I've read that.

So it was the way that ancient Aztecs functioned well together in society. And it become more popular lately because Tom Brady said it was. It's using these four agreements every day that gave me the success in the NFL. So one of the agreements.

Oh, wow. If Tom Brady says that, then obviously it's working in 2022.

So one of the agreements is be impeccable with your word. Now that has a lot of meaning. So for me, this is really important. If I say I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it. And if for some reason I can't, I'm gonna apologize and I'm gonna be up for it. And this is, to me, one of the key differences between somebody I do business with and somebody I don't. If somebody says they're gonna do it, they better do it. And if they're gonna lose, use their words loosely and, like, make excuses. Well, this is not somebody I want to do business with. And. And I'm the same with my claims.

So you're saying you're the same with your clients means. Sorry, I'm sorry if I'm interrupting you.

Just because if I say I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it. There's no discussion.

What. When you're coaching clients and they're. They're new, they're coming back on every call and on a one on one call, and they've. They're not taking action, they're just coming for the. For the validation for the. For the love, for the feel good factor. What happens then?

Well, I call them out on it. Well, first of all, I also do a screening of the clients I take on. I have a first conversation to see if we're a good fit. And I want to. And this is one of the questions I ask them. I'm like, are you ready to do the work? Because if you're not ready to the work, I'm not the right coach, because I'm a high achiever, and I like to. I feel good when my clients have results. So, you know, of course, life happens, and we might be sick and something might happen, but then we'll talk about, okay, what's getting in the way of you achieving your goals? What's getting in the way? This happens. And I always try to identify what's getting in the way so that they can then move forward and do it. And you have to understand that some clients move very quickly, and some clients move. Move very slowly. And you have to meet the client where they're at. But as long as they're always making progress, sure. That's what got it.

And this has been fantastic. Melissa, thank you very much. I'll definitely be in touch. Thank you. Melissa, thank you for your time. Take care.

Take care. Thank you. Sa.