The Power of Story w Melanie Deziel MUIYB Podcast Ep 5

Take some time, set it aside, look through each platform, all these places where your brand voice shows up, and keep in mind that includes things like any automated emails that get sent out, the copy on your website, you know, if you have older blog posts that are still out there bringing people in, you know, all of those contribute to how you speak to your audience.

I want to start End of 2016, right? So it's end of 2016 and you lose all your clients. And not due to your fault.

No, no, I didn't do anything. It was one of those situations where I had several long-term clients. You know, I had a really good consulting relationship with them. Some of these relationships were years old. And it was just like, I feel like the stars aligning sounds like a good thing, so I don't know what the negative version sounds like.

Yeah, what would be the negative of that?

I don't know, asteroids aligning.

I like that, the asteroids aligning and colliding in our face.

Exactly. So it was one, my point of contact had been laid off and the person put in their place was completely changing everything. So that meant I was no longer working with the team. Another client, they had restructured the business and so the department I was working with was eliminated. Another one, they just happened to lose their budget and so they weren't I'm not taking on any more consulting projects for the coming year. And I just went from, you know, best year of my life to I don't know what I'm going to do next week.

But why was it the best year of your life? Were you most revenue or what?

Yeah, yeah. From a business standpoint, you know, I had all these like, you know, I mean, the recurring revenue is the best revenue, right? You can predict it, you know it's coming. And so I had these wonderful long-term client relationships and then all of a sudden I had nothing. I hadn't— I was pretty much at capacity at that point. So I hadn't been admittedly doing a ton of business development to backfill those spaces. So it was not a fun time. And this was also the first week of December. And I think a lot of us know, you know, unless you're in a business that thrives on holiday giving, of which consulting is not as far as I'm aware, you know, those last few weeks of December are not a great time to be trying to scrape—

Oh, you can't draw completely.

Yeah. Doesn't have nothing to do.

What was the business exactly? What were you doing in 2016?

So at the time I was just starting up what is now Storyfuel, the consulting and education firm that I work with. You know, it was in a totally different form at that time admittedly. A lot of our clients were publishers, whereas now we work primarily with marketers, you know, with corporations. At the time we were helping publishers, you know, magazines, newspapers, et cetera, start their own branded content teams that would service corporations that we now work with. So we sort of cut out the middleman and we work directly with brands now.

Okay, so you were doing that, publishers all by asteroids colliding go away.

Yeah.

So 2017 is really a restart for Storyfuel.

It was, yeah, it was, it was a big restart. And I mean, I think looking back, I, I'm glad that it happened. I didn't feel that way at the time, but it was definitely a good period of time for me to really reflect and think about, okay, well, who are the clients I've most loved working with? Who have been the people who have gained the most from our work together? You know, what has really been the work that's, you know, made me light up, that made me happy? And I think that's how I kind of came to realize that working directly with the brands is where I felt like we could make a lot of, a lot of impact. You know, that those are the folks who are able to take action. You know, they were able to make a difference in their business. And so that's that's kind of where we started to focus attention more so.

How come for entrepreneurs, and maybe this is actually, I guess, it's true for all people, how come reflection is like, oh, that was really helpful, in the moment it's like, oh, this is a shitstorm. Like, what, why is that for you?

You know, I don't know why it is for everyone else. I know why it is for me, at least, is I tend to be a very process-oriented person. I'm type A, like I'm a to-do list, organizer. So I'm, I'm always focused on what's happening next. You know, I'm, I've got a list, I've got a prioritization, things are organized, there's a timeline. And so unless I schedule it, I'm not going to be doing a lot of reflecting because I'm already sort of, what's the next task? What's the next project? What's the next event, the next client? And so it's something that I've tried to be better about in recent times is to actually put some calendar time quarterly or so to look back and say, okay, what's worked well this quarter? What's not working well? What can I change? And it's, I think it's been a major shift in my business since I started being more mindful of making time for that kind of reflection because it's so easy to get stuck in a rut of stuff that's not working or slowly draining the life out of you. And it made a big difference for me to kind of have intentional time once a quarter to just take a step, take a beat and see what feels right and what doesn't.

What was draining the life out of you? Anything in particular?

I mean, haven't we all had a client that drained the life out of us?

Oh, eff yeah. Yeah. Tell me about your worst client. Like, what was your worst client ever? You don't have to say any names, but what's her name?

I mean, thank God I'm under NDA, right? We can't.

Totally NDA. We're not recording a thing.

What's her name?

What's her name? What happened?

It's, you know, I think for me, I'm very impact-driven. It's part of why I love what I do is that ability to really teach people things and watch that turn into confidence and action really quickly. I had a client that sounded like they were one of those clients, but they were really a, we need to check the box so it looks like we care about this kind of client. And so it was just heartbreaking and soul-wrenching for me to be putting everything into it and trying to teach and doing exercises. And you know, I was like really putting my all into it and it just became clear very quickly that they didn't actually care and they just needed to be able to say that these training sessions had happened. They just needed to, give the appearance that they were caring about this. And it, that for me, I mean, showing up knowing that no one cares and still want to deliver. It's like, oh, that was, that was the worst. And it was really—

So did you continue through that, Melanie? Or did you say we got to cut bait? Or how do you handle it?

I mean, we did. And this was one of the lessons I learned is I need to vet better. But we had, we had signed a longer-term contract. It was several months of recurring sessions. What I did do is try to see, I then started to view it as a place for me to try out new things. You know, if if it's not as valuable to them as is necessary, you know, as it should be, then this is a time for me to try things and see if I can shake them up a little bit, try to, you know, undo what I would normally do and see if it makes any sort of impact. So I still— it was still valuable for me, and I think almost like comics learn a lot from, you know, bad stand-up audiences. I mean, it's a test of your mettle, I think, to have an unwilling and unaccepting audience as a facilitator or a speaker, for sure.

But what about the draw for money? And I'll give you some context. So I had a client once, first name was Carol. Carol was a dick. And just when the defining moment was her company was buying some software from us and one of the other key people on the phone and Carol starts reaming out this person on the phone, like rude, insulting. And I'm like, what are we doing? We— how we escaped from that was we actually jacked up the price on the software to make it inaccessible. But that was the first time I ever declined an opportunity because it was substantial financially. I'm grateful. I'm grateful I did.

Yeah.

But the allure of money— I— have you ever been in a situation where the lure of money is so attractive?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I, um, I think especially early on, I think when I first left my full-time job, because I, before I finally left and started my own thing, I was working at Time Incorporated. So I was the director of creative strategy over 35 magazines. I mean, I had a lot of teams that I was coordinating with and working on these massive multimillion-dollar content programs. And so to take that with my own office and then jump out and kind of put up my own shingle, there was, it was definitely a culture shock in terms of like the lifestyle that I could lead in one versus the other, right? Like that startup world. So I mean, in those days, I definitely took on early on some clients that were like just left of my sweet spot where I ran somebody's, you know, somebody's Instagram for a while, which is like not the kind of work that I would typically do, but it was work, you know. A couple other similar projects of like a friend needs some help with this vaguely communications-related project. Are you interested?

And I was like, sleeping floors, right?

Let me look at my spreadsheet. Yes, I'm interested in that project.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But so, but that back then you got to do it. You got to put food on the table, I presume.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

There's a certain point where you have to be integral to the business's continuity over— when was that threshold for you?

I don't know. I mean, I think it changes. I think it changes. Okay. You know, I think the reality we're in right now for everyone who's in like COVID times, right?

Yeah.

My thresholds are all different than they would have been.

That's a good point.

A year ago, you know, so I think It's tough, truthfully, for me to say where that bar is right now. I think I'm probably truthfully back in a position of doing probably not those same kind of projects, but similarly slightly left of center in terms of where I would normally focus my attention because I think we're all sort of left of center in what we need at the point right now anyway. So yeah.

So what determines if you go left of center? Is it because I don't have enough money coming in to put food on the table or—

Yeah.

I don't feel comfortable financially. There's got to be some kind of trigger.

It's a good question. So we're very blessed and privileged. We're not in a position where we're having to make decisions at this point, you know, based on next week's grocery budget. That's luckily not the situation we're in. Very, very blessed and happy about that. I think a lot of it comes from a feast or famine mindset. I think, yeah, you know, right now everything feels urgent and important because everything is on fire. And so I'm probably a little more likely to compromise or or question like, "Eh, I wouldn't normally do that, but maybe it's worth it because of this situation. Who knows what's going to come?" You know, I think it's uncertainty that makes me kind of, you know, question that a little bit. But I will say we have a young daughter at home. So we had a baby girl last August. She's almost a year old. And so, you know, even though the last few months have been chaotic and abnormal, I will say that having her at home has also made it much easier for me to decide which gigs that are worth traveling to are worth it. Obviously, again, with COVID you know, things are not as timely in terms of travel right now, but there was a time where, man, I would, if I thought the work was going to be impactful and I was going to have fun and it was a city I wanted to go to, man, I would hop on a plane and go do a gig for $1,000, you know.

Yeah, I got you. I got it. Yeah.

You know, like, if it was worth it and now, it's like, is that worth being away from my daughter and not being able to tuck her in at night and not being able to have dinner with my husband and not being able to, you know, take her to daycare and put her hair in pigtails? Like, I don't know, those things matter. You know, being home is more important now. And so that, that threshold actually was, was brought a lot higher when she was born.

That's interesting. So your husband before this, and before your daughter was born, Sounds like you're traveling like a banshee.

Oh yeah, I was on the road 100+ days a year.

Okay, so how does that affect a marriage and a relationship? How do you manage that?

Yeah, well, I mean, truthfully, I think the luckiest thing for me in the world is that my husband was actually an entrepreneur before I was, and so he understands it, he gets it. We balance one another very well. He's an entrepreneur in the sports space, and he comes from more of like a finance and, you know, business background, and I'm more on the creative side. And so it works out really well in that we can balance one another. I help them with their creative and marketing and communications, you know, he can help my business with our projections. And so he saw the need for it. And he got to come with, you know, quite often whenever he could.

Oh yeah, that's true, right? So you don't have your daughter, so yeah. Yeah. Tell me a little about Storyfuel. What exactly does your business do?

Yeah, so I would say we're very mission-driven, impact-driven, like I said, we help marketers and creators tell better stories. And, you know, that's sort of a mission statement, but from a tactical perspective, Um, what I'm really trying to do is take what I learned studying journalism and in the world of journalism and help teach those best practices to people who have had communications or marketing thrust upon them and maybe didn't get the same kind of training. So, uh, that comes in a lot of different forms, whether it's, you know, like I've talked about the workshops, masterminds, you know, we do coaching and things like that. But really we're focused on teaching people those best practices of coming up with content ideas, optimizing your content, on an organizational side, it's maybe how to build a content team, like how to build a newsroom, you know, building content processes, strategy. We're really trying to, you know, take those things that work so well in the more editorial journalism world and give those same tools and best practices to the other side.

Okay, so this is fascinating. So we're trying to build— we're tiny, we got 6 of us here, but we're trying to build a cohesive way of communicating, right? So we're not—

yeah.

So is that, is that type of situations that you address?

Yeah, definitely. So it sounds like you're, you're looking for more of a consistent documented brand voice that can be used by all the members of your team in all the different places where you show up. Is that—

sounds like you do this professionally. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, the problem, and I'm sure you hear this all the time, is there's inconsistency in communication. We have disparate platforms. Where sometimes one we're focusing on more than another. There's inconsistencies on the same day, different messages. What, what does an entrepreneur do to wrap their hands around that?

Yeah, I mean, so what we're talking about, I would call this like a brand voice audit, and we do this for especially a lot of startups and smaller teams. I think so often if it's just you, you kind of know your voice, and so you just use it in all these places. But the bigger your team gets, it becomes a lot harder to keep things consistent. I think, you know, we would focus on an audit first and see what's working. So if you're in that position, that's what I would do is take some time, set it aside, look through each platform, all these places where your brand voice shows up. And keep in mind that includes things like any automated emails that get sent out, the copy on your website. You know, if you have older blog posts that are still out there bringing people in, you know, all of those contribute to how you speak to your audience. So I would do an audit and see what's working for your audience based on engagement, what's getting likes, shares, views, whatever that metric is. But then also ask what's working for you because if the stuff that works really well for your audience makes you feel sick to your stomach and like a sellout, then that's not what you wanna optimize for. You gotta find that sweet spot.

[Speaker] Yeah, do you see businesses doing that, that they try to kowtow, I don't know if that's the right word, but kowtow to what they think the client wants but it's incongruent with who they are?

I mean, I think we see it like there used to be a— I can't remember the account, and maybe you'll remember this. There was a Twitter account that was like brand— I think it was Brands Saying Bae, like B-A-E before. Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, okay, bae. So it was Brands Saying Bae, and it was basically screenshots of brands doing cringy things like using slang that just they should not be using.

Oh, that's so funny.

Jumping onto memes. And so like it definitely happens when you're like, we can hop onto this trend. So we're going to say that something is lit, you know, or we're going to use a hashtag that we don't fully understand and get it thrown back in our face in some way. So there's, there's definitely some of that. I, I think the biggest challenge actually comes for personal brands though, because I think big brands are always going to try to get— be a part of a trending conversation.

Yeah.

But I think for individuals, we're not taught to articulate, you know, our brand values or our voice, how we show up, how do we want to be perceived? We don't have a PR firm behind us or a communications team, like choosing all of our, how we show up in all these places. Right. And so I think that most often happens to individuals who don't have a clear sense of those things, who haven't taken time to do that because what'll happen is they hop on Instagram and they see, oh, well, Gary Vee, Gary Vaynerchuk is doing a lot of lives. So yeah. So what we need to do is I'm just going to yell and use the F word a lot and like use black backgrounds with white text. 'cause that does it. And it may get them sort of short-term engagement if they're, you know, hustling enough, right? But is that building the brand they want? Are they attracting the people they need? Are they setting themselves up for long-term success? Usually not. And so I think if you don't have that clear sense of who your brand is, even as an individual, it's really easy to get distracted by someone else's shiny object.

Oh, that's real. I heard people say, and now it raises a red flag for me, people say, oh, I'm a chameleon.

And I'm like, oh, here we go.

And what they're saying is like, you know, I can play into the environment and fit in, but then I can be something else somewhere else.

And I hear that inauthentic and undifferentiated. Who's going to know who you are if you don't even know who you are? You know, Ann Handley, you know, fellow marketing speaker in the space, I've seen her use this quote, and I'm not sure that it's hers. Maybe she stole it from someone. I'll have to look it up so we can clarify. Yeah, right. But she said something like, if your logo fell off, you know, would anyone know that it was yours? And that's a question that I think is really important to think about, is if, if someone saw one of your posts and the username wasn't displayed, it wasn't showing, would someone know that it was from you? That's juicy, right?

Yeah.

You know, if your infographic showed up and the bottom got cropped off and we can't see your logo, do we see your brand? Do we hear your voice? And I think you can even see that in something as simple as like a confirmation page, or what does the text of a button say on your website? You know, where are those places where you could show up and be you, even if the logo is not in frame. And so I think it's so easy when you, when you don't have a clear sense of who you are to be somebody else. Right. And so I think it happens most often with like personal brands, influencers, or like public figures who come into the space. Spotlight really suddenly.

Yeah.

You know, someone who is like an everyday citizen who, I don't know, saves a baby falling from a building or something, and then suddenly they're like a meme, right?

Yeah.

You know, they— and then they're like, okay, I need to act like I have a PR agent, and I've gotta, you know, post these certain types of photos, and I've gotta, I don't know, have a SoundCloud and start a podcast. They just start doing what everyone's doing, you know?

Yes, I guess it's— yeah, if you feel like you have to versus I want to, there's already an indicator something wrong. What about, here's the thing, the cobbler's shoes, the cobbler's kids' shoes. How about your brand? Like, are you able to do what you do for your clients for yourself?

So this is a really good question.

Be honest, don't—

Oh no, I'm gonna be maybe too honest. Maybe you'll regret asking this question, who knows. And I'm honest with my clients too. So I try my best to do as I preach, right? To do as I, say to do. But I'm also only a person and I do spend more of my time on my client's stuff than on my own.

So you do all this stuff, you don't have a team beyond yourself?

Yeah, we've got a couple folks who come in for special projects. Like I'm not a designer or an editor, so I'd bring somebody in if you had those kinds of needs. But the bulk of the strategy and direct consulting and the training right now is all me. So, you know, we've got systems set up, I've got an admin who helps run all this stuff. But you know, I don't personally have time to create YouTube videos every week, like I recommend some of my clients do. If you go to my YouTube, you'll see I haven't added a video in almost 2 years. But I tell my clients that and I explain why I put my efforts into the places where I see the best returns, which is exactly what I want my clients to do. So you're not going to see me blogging every single day or posting YouTube videos all the time, because that hasn't historically generated returns for me. I spend a lot of time having podcast conversations, writing guest posts on other platforms because that tends to bring me new audience. I am very active on Twitter because I have the biggest audience there. I spend a good amount of time on LinkedIn because I have a great network there. So I'm practicing what I preach in that I'm making strategic choices about where to spend my time. And I do feel that my brand voice and my brand aesthetic is consistent across those places. But I'm often making specific recommendations for my clients that I myself am not following. Because it's right for them and maybe not right for me.

How do you avoid being that flash that you save the baby from the building, you die, you save the baby, now you're on every news channel, you have your 15 minutes of fame, but how do you extend that to 16 minutes?

I think the biggest challenge is not, again, not having a clear goal or a clear sense of what you're saying, right? You know, if you're in that opportunity, you have like this opportunity that falls into your lap, You've got to be ready for that moment to have something worth saying and worth listening to, right? I think the biggest flash in the pan is when, you know, somebody gets— they do something magical or they have their 5 minutes of fame and then every interview they've either— they are saying the same thing over and over again and so why should we keep listening? We've heard the story, right? And then the next thing that happens is they— or they say the wrong thing because it's just that they're not prepared for the moment. I don't know what my business is or You know, there's no, there's no plan of action. And so they maybe just start grasping at things. I think, you know, you look at the people who have turned opportunity into a long-term situation, it's the folks who had some sort of vision before it happened of, if I had an opportunity, here's what I would turn that into. And I know I'm a planner, so I always have that stuff thought out. But I think that's the best recommendation. It's also important to think about positive and negative opportunity. You know, I'm not a crisis management expert, but I know there are a lot of people who were caught off guard with everything that was happening through COVID, the Black Lives Matter protests, you know, people who were unprepared for any sort of negative sentiment or negative response. And if you're not clear about what you stand for and who you are as a brand, then you're going to have a lot of trouble articulating that to people when the moment matters most.

You know, I'm thinking of the pandemic. I want to talk about Black Lives Matter too, but first the pandemic. So I get this email from Chevy. and I own a Chevy, the car's fine. The opening line, Melanie, said, "We are all in this together." And I'm like, "Oh, here we freaking go. Start selling me Chevy." It is the worst, most pandering line, "We're all in this together." Why do businesses like Chevy, and small brands do this too, we do something that we feel speaks to the community, but it really means we're being opportunistic and trying to placate and shift and manipulate.

I think there's a lot of marketers who feel pressure to say something because we're expected to say something. And this is, again, if you don't actually have anything of substance to say on this issue, you're going to end up saying the wrong thing, right? So many brands are getting caught in that we're in this together. And it's like, well, you're telling your customers you're in this together, but you spent all this money on a commercial instead of, you know, but you laid people off, or we're in this together, but, you know, you've closed all your locations and so your customers can't even access the things that you're in together, right? Or, you know, just if you're not prepared, and I know you can't prepare for every eventuality, but have like a couple key buckets, you know, executive does something horrible and embarrassing, like, you know, public health crisis, natural disaster. Like, there's a few key things to think through. What do we stand for? How will we respond? And how can we message the way we're going to respond in those situations? Because that's where, that's when everyone fell into the trite, "Together but apart." Oh, God. "We're all in this together. We stand with you." And it's like, none of those things mean anything. And you're not doing anything.

It sounds like separately equal. Yeah, I wonder, I wonder if Chevy emailed and said, We weren't prepared for this. This actually knocked us back. We are shocked and we're scrambling, but we're going to serve as best we can.

Be human.

I know. Oh my God, a company actually admits. All right, so let's talk about Black Lives Matter. So sometimes not saying anything is the best thing because you don't know what's going on. Black Lives Matter is a different situation. That's right. I was— I responded after George Floyd was murdered. About 2 weeks after that is when I finally made a statement and people were asking me, what's taking you so long? I really wanted to comprehend and prepare and understand my own ignorance, which is tremendous ignorance. But there was a certain point where I was, I was at risk of being silent too long.

Yeah.

Tell me about the situation. How do we navigate in when to speak and when not to speak?

It's, it's really hard to know. And I don't have like a one-size-fits-all answer. But a lot of the advice that I have given to clients around this is as soon as you have something to say, you should say it, you know, and I don't mean that in terms of like a rush and don't edit. But what I mean is, if you don't have anything to say, if you have nothing to express, you don't have a policy to point to, you don't have an opinion to share, then simply posting a hashtag is not going to help you. It's not really saying anything. Once you're clear on what you're going to say, what you stand for, what you are changing, you know, what you want to acknowledge, then you want to get that out there and share it. And so I think we saw both sides of that, right? We saw brands that took a very long time to say something and people started to wonder like, "Can't come up with anything yet? You know, it's been 3 weeks or something." But we also saw the brands who simply posted #BLM and thought that was going to be enough for them.

Oh, and I think that's a fatal mistake, right?

You know, right? 'Cause you're not really saying anything, you know?

And so It almost sounds like in that case, you're trying to say, you know, hey, we're done with this, let's move on to selling.

Right. Well, and there's, I think a lot of it comes down to authenticity. And there's, if you're not familiar with Katie Martell, she talks about brand pandering. And so she's an expert on this topic, both in terms of, you know, Pride Month and Black Lives Matter and a lot of these similar movements where when it lands poorly is when it's not authentic. People know you're just turning your logo rainbow or turning your profile photo black, that doesn't actually create change, that doesn't actually equally pay your employees, that doesn't actually root out, you know, bias or racism within your company culture. And so if there's actually action to back it up, I mean, which I think is true for humans in our relationships too, like, as long as you're telling the truth, you're actually trying to do something, you know, you're actually making changes or acknowledging ignorance, then that's the best way to go, but people catch on really quick if those promises are empty, and that's the biggest, it's almost worse to say something and have there be backlash that proves you're lying or, you know, that you're, you know, where people say, oh yeah, really? Well, how come, you know, you fired this many people who are in this protected class? You know, like it's, when it backfires on you because you're not being transparent, I think that's way worse as a brand than like holding your tongue until you figure out how to address it in an authentic way.

I was thinking like when these PPP loans came out and the first story that I broke was Shake Shack gets $10 million, right? My response is, oh, the CFO, she's good. She did the right thing to get money, but the CMO should be fired tomorrow. The CMO is like, ah, who cares? Because now you have this mega corporation that's stealing from small business.

Yeah, it's a bad look.

Yeah, so it's a bad look, right? So I— these decisions, there, there's sometimes a logical reason. Hey, they're going for money, you know, it's a, it's a capital, right? Great. But there's no consideration of the greater impact.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's interesting. So one other question I have about is you had a defining moment, I think it was back in 2014, your father comes really ill. Thank God he survives.

Yeah.

But you discovered something about your business. I thought it was fascinating. Can you share a little bit about that?

Yeah, so this was actually, this is what prompted me to start what is now Storyfuel. At the time, like I said, I was working at Time Incorporated, huge company, big team, a lot of, a lot of projects. I had been there almost a year and I found out my dad got really sick. I was in New York, he was in Connecticut. And my family, it was sort of a, you need to come home ASAP situation. So went home, it wound up being several weeks that he was in the hospital undergoing procedures and things. And again, thankfully he's fine. Like, we're very blessed, he's healthy. But it was, it was rough for a few weeks there, you know, in and out of ICU and whatnot. And, you know, I had this, at first I felt this tremendous guilt of leaving my job. And I didn't like that. I didn't like that. You know, I knew my father was fighting for his life in the hospital. And I felt bad about missing a meeting. Like, that didn't sit right with me.

Yeah, I get you though.

And then what I found is as soon as I got home, after about 4 or 5 days, once everyone had adjusted to the fact that like, hey, I'm working remotely, this is an emergency, I'm not going to be in the office, the invites stopped coming, the calls stopped coming. And life was going on without me. And I think it was like after 2 or 3 weeks of that, I slowly realized like, I'm bearing so much emotion for this job and it has no bearing on the outcome. The team is fine. They're doing the work. The projects are getting done. My role is— seems to be largely the person who stresses about everything. Like, that's not healthy for me. It's not productive for the team. Clearly work is still getting done. And so I think I just sort of realized that it was no longer a fit for me through no fault of anyone, just that if they can survive several weeks without me being there and nothing has caught on fire, nothing has been forgotten, like everything's fine. And if I don't miss it at all, then like something's not right. And so that was a good hint for me that I wasn't having the impact I wanted to. I really like that growth phase. You know, I, I had a number of shorter jobs a year or so before I started my own company. And it's because I thrive in that environment of teaching and setting up and connecting the dots and getting everything going. And I'm not as useful after that. Like, once I'm trying to teach people to fish, and once they can fish, you don't need someone there telling you how to fish anymore, you know. And so that was sort of a lightbulb moment for me of like, this is now the third time that I've hit this phase of I built a team and they're operating as they should be. And what's— what now for me? And so that was really my big lightbulb moment where I thought, I guess I need to to maybe start my own thing where all I do is the teaching and the helping and the setting up and the starting, you know, and the problem solving and optimizing. I could always put myself in that situation where I do my best work. And like I said, thankfully, you know, my now husband, he was my boyfriend at the time, has a much more entrepreneurial spirit. They don't really teach that in journalism, or they didn't when I was in journalism school. So he was the one who said, well, start your own thing. And he had all these ideas that helped me see what those possibilities were. You know, I don't know that I ever would have looked at the whole wide world of jobs and opportunities and said, I'll start my own consulting and teaching, you know, organization where I can teach people. I don't know that I could have had that idea without him sort of pointing me at that possibility.

It's amazing how sometimes these traumatic and life-changing events are truly life-changing. They change the trajectory for our lives. Yeah. Melanie, where can our listeners find out more about StoryFuel and what you're doing?

Well, you could learn all about Storyfuel at storyfuel.co. So it's.co, Story F-U-E-L. That's where you'll find the info about my book, the Content Fuel Framework, how to generate unlimited story ideas, and about our masterminds, the coaching, all that jazz, and all my links for social media if you want to find me wherever you like to spend your time.

Awesome. So everyone check out Storyfuel right now. Melanie, thank you so much for sharing all these insights. I appreciate it.

Thanks for letting me share my story.