Episode 347: Love, Growth, and Letting Go: Navigating Relationships and Personal Development with Melissa Dlugolecki

Welcome back to the Fuel youl Legacy Podcast. Each week we expose the faulty foundational mindsets of the past and rebuild a newer, stronger foundation essential in creating your meaningful legacy. We've got a lot of work to do, so let's get started. As much as you like this podcast, I'm certain that you're going to love the book that I just released on Amazon, Fuel youl, the Nine Pillars to Build a Meaningful Legacy. I wrote this to share with you the experiences that I had while I was identifying my identity, how I began to create my meaningful legacy, and how you can create yours. You're going to find this book on Kindle, Amazon, and as always, on my website, samnickerbocker.com help us stop the cycle of overpopulation and euthanasia. The Animal alliance is committed to spaying neuter programs to save lives. Visit theanimalalliance.org to learn more about how you can make a difference. Together, we can ensure a brighter future for all pets. Welcome back to another wonderful episode of the Fuel youl Legacy Show. And today we have a previous guest. Just a few episodes ago, we heard from Melissa Dulugalecki. I'm trying. This is a fun last name and she's still down south in South America. But we ended kind of in the middle of a really intense conversation that we didn't have time to finish. And so we're going to just continue that process of this conversation. Then at the second half of this episode, we're going to actually get into the. The key things that she helps people with in her business and how she's been able to not just grow her own business and the skills that she's been able to learn from that, but also how could she help you grow your business? Because it's great to know that somebody else is growing their business and what they're doing to do that, but also how can you grow your business is also an essential or. Or valuable part of that. So in that we kind of ended the last conversation really talking about what she had learned from grief. And I would say, really, we posed the question. We didn't really get a full answer on what, what you learned from grief and that relationship with the father of your daughter after you lost your daughter, what was that like transitioning into. Into what ultimately ended up separation of the relationship, learning about yourselves. What did you learn about yourself during that process?

Yeah, I'm hoping my dog isn't too loud in the background.

It's all good if there's a dog in the background.

Okay. She's a little sick, so thank you for asking that, and thank you for continuing this conversation. You know, I think that one of the most powerful things that I learned through that. Hold on one second. I'm just making sure. Sorry.

You're good. No worries. Okay.

All right. I think one of the most powerful things that I learned through that, as somebody who. There are two main lessons. One is, I think we grow up in a society where we're shown happily ever after and we're shown the, you know, the man typically comes in and saves the woman. And I think that was something I wanted. I wanted him to save me and the grief. I wanted him to take the pain away from me. I wanted him to make it all better. And I was really shown this level of personal responsibility that actually a very expansive relationship means that we are fully whole in ourselves and that we expand one another versus fill one another. And so I had been seeking kind of my savior and kind of had these patterns where I had been looking for my partner to save me. And so I was attracting in dynamics that, you know, I mean, I think the word codependent is thrown around a lot, but arguably had elements of codependency. And so one of the biggest lessons I learned from grief, when I got to really honor his needs and what he needed to grieve and how those were genuinely in conflict with my needs, that rather than asking him to sacrifice his needs in order to meet mine, love was actually me having my needs met in a way that I could with other supports, and then working with him where we can meet each other's, but honoring that he was worthy of meeting his needs, and his role wasn't to sacrifice his needs in order to take care of mine. And so it really kind of broke me into this whole new level of understanding that love is almost a form of responsibility for ourselves and how we show up and how we are whole and how we meet our needs. And then our partners, of course, can help and they can supplement and they can expand. But being fully dependent on somebody to quote, unquote, save you is not the highest expression of love. In fact, I would argue that it's a lower vibration expression of love that really is rooted in need and lack rather than really expansion and honoring. And so that would be one of the first ones. And I'll pause there before I hit the second one.

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And just to recall a little bit, because I know we just jumped right in. I'm so appreciative that we can do this. Because we already had this conversation. If you go back and listen to the end of the episode, she had actually mentioned, I say she, I'm talking to the audience. And you, you had mentioned how you gained this perspective as you went to a counselor or a therapist and they said, hey, look, put the ladder of all the things that are his responsibilities and where do you fall on this responsibility thing? Because he still has a daughter, he still has to be a dad, he still has to be a provider to his other child. And gaining that perspective is crucial. I think that so many people, especially in a heightened emotional state, which you were because you just lost your daughter, they aren't really open to hear a new perspective. And so that's one of the things I wanted to kind of pull apart a little bit. How did you open yourself up to receive it? Because a lot of people can say things to you that are true, but if you don't receive it, it doesn't matter how true it is. So what are some things that you feel they did well to help you receive that rather than kind of tell you, but allow you to discover that yourself?

I think very effective coaching or counseling requires curiosity and leading somebody to draw their conclusion through asking questions. And ultimately through my counselor asking me questions to get me to then articulate what else he has going on, what else might be priority, what else are the options, where else can I get support? It was through that question and answer that supported me kind of like the Socratic method supported me into understanding. Like, oh, it took me out of my own thought process. And I think to my credit too, there's also a level of my own core values of being open and being coachable. And sometimes we go to coaches or counselors so committed to our current ways and state and view that really the coach or counselor can't do much. Because if we're so committed to our perspective, then we're not going to be open to doing something new or changing. So I think it was a co creation of my counselors methods that worked and also my willingness to be coached and see something differently. Because I would offer to anyone listening, if we aren't willing to see something differently, then what are we actually doing? Going to seek support?

Do you think that there's a way that you, you're open to it? Like, I think that. I don't know, I'm just trying to. I work with a lot of people and sometimes people come and they say, well, I'm open to it. And they're, they're aware that they want to know more. But their habits are so ingrained and their focus has been so ingrained that even though they're aware that what they're doing isn't working and they want an outside perspective, it's. They're still so majorly resistant to change that even though they hear it and they can acknowledge that maybe it's a better thing, they just can't really change anything about it.

So.

So what can be done to help that? You've coached a lot of people in your life. You've helped a lot of individuals. If somebody came to you and said, hey, I recognize that I really want to change, but I. And I know that what you're telling me is true and that I should change, but I'm just so ingrained in this. It's not that they don't want to necessarily. They just literally don't know how to let go of all of their ingrained beliefs overnight. You know, how do they. How do you help somebody through that?

It's definitely not going to happen overnight. And I always tell people, look, you've lived decades with this type of response or this default. It will take time to undo it. And so I think actually letting go of the expectation that you're suddenly going to feel different, it's almost as if. Can you hold open the thought even if you don't feel it, Even if you don't feel it and it doesn't land well for you, can you at least stay open to the thought of this being a possibility or this being a new reality? And as you slowly begin to do that, like 1% a day, 2% a day, over time, it will become your default, but your default will not change overnight. Right. It wasn't. I wasn't instantly grounded into, okay, this feels good. In fact, it was like, this feels terrible. I hate this. And, okay, well, what are the alternatives? And then I think also acknowledging that there's a big level of nervous system regulation that plays into all of this. And so our default responses are so wired to our nervous system in what feels safe or not safe. And that word can be thrown around a lot. But for me, it didn't feel safe because my nervous system was interpreting not being saved as I was going to be abandoned. And that was very much more deeply rooted than that relationship. So it allowed me the space to now go to the root cause instead of the symptom. And that would be my other encouragement for everyone is work on the root cause, not the symptom. So whatever is coming up that's triggering you is actually the symptom of something a lot deeper when we know that we're not giving our power away to that circumstance. So often people will give their power away, like, and they'll look at one situation and they'll think that that is the cause of everything, but it's not. It's our nervous system's response, and it's the stories we tell ourselves around that experience that are the root cause. And it is only in going to the root cause that we can actually really heal and begin to rewire. So the grief brought up an opportunity for me to go to a root cause of fear, of abandonment. Truthfully, like, easiest way to put it. You know, my. My parents were divorced, and, you know, there's a lot of layers there. We're not going to get into all of that now. But I had this fear that if I, you know, that if I wouldn't be worthy of love, if somebody wasn't constantly there for me, it wasn't safe. And so I had to really deal with that because otherwise I was carrying that into the relationship. And even though the relationship didn't work, I guess another thing that I learned, I'll just lead into it, is that there was a difference between alignment and force. And there are a lot of times where, yes, we want to be committed and we want to see something through, but then there are also times where we are trying to force something, and we're actually not honoring each person's needs, goals, desires, and those will change over time. I'm a very different version of myself than I was 10 years ago. So the relationships in my life from 10 years ago, we either had to grow together or we're going to grow apart. And that's not making anyone right or wrong. It's just a reality. And I think that is why, you know, relationships can be harder. And also the. You know, Lewis Howes did a podcast on this where he was talking about, like, the average age that people live to is, like, almost double. And so before, you know, when people are living to their 40s, when we had all these ideas, maybe 50s, all these ideas of, like, a lifelong partner, there's a lot of things that have changed. And so I'm not saying don't make your relationship lifelong, but I think what I learned was that I was afraid to let that relationship go because it felt like a failure. Or I created this story about myself that I failed or would be judged. But really the most highest expression of love was allowance for me to truly move in the direction that felt good. For me and allow my former partner to live in the way that felt really good for him. And those just no longer matched after some time.

Yeah. So what you're, what you're saying brings up kind of my philosophy of Christ or forgiveness in general. And in large part I've. Well, first I decided to get rid of the word forgiveness because it didn't align with the most people's narratives of what it means. And then I'm like, okay, I'll accept the word forgiveness in a very isolated conversation because this fear of abandonment.

And.

I'm just working through this, you tell me how much this aligns with you, but I don't know exactly what the specific time was when you realized that it was a fear of abandonment rather than not loved and what that discovery process was. But a lot of times we feel that we feel a certain way about fear of abandonment. And that fear of abandonment actually comes in judgment of somebody else who we feel like we're abandoning. But in the reality we already pass judgment on what how we feel about somebody who abandoned somebody or abandoned something. And then because we've passed judgment on that, then we feel an emotional sort of way if we are ever going to eventually or potentially be perceived as abandoning something else. And so we're at this self harming cycle of emotional, like I say emotional cutting because it's not like a murder, but it's like just a death by a thousand knives of I'm a bad person if I'm ever portrayed a certain way because I didn't like how somebody else abandoned me. Now if I'm ever be portrayed as an abandoneder, then I'm a bad person and I don't want to be a bad person. So I'm going to cling to something rather than accept that they weren't bad and I'm not bad for as you say, allowing life to be life. Yeah, that's hard.

100 yeah. I think a lot of it comes back to, you know, the word untangling, you know, and for me it was actually more about self judgment. It was more about I don't want to feel the discomfort of judging myself because I'm judging myself if I feel not loved or abandoned when in reality that's not what's happening. But it was creating self judgment which was wildly uncomfortable. And then we don't want to self judge. So we look to control and we look to grasp and we look to do these different things to avoid, avoid the pain and the discomfort of self judgment that ultimately we're putting on ourselves. So if we're putting on ourselves, we can also take it off ourselves. And so that's where the work needs to be done, rather than trying to control everything around you.

Yeah. So with that being said, there's this other topic that I want to pull into this conversation. So you mentioned that you were, you said it was like a lower vibration of love to be needing or expecting him to come in and save you. And I would just call it not love. I would call it manipulation. I would call it something else. I wouldn't even use the word love because it's not that. But in our language patterns, we've kind of accepted, okay, it's maybe just a lower vibration because there were still good intentions. There may have been good intentions somewhere, but the, the actual root cause wasn't good intentions. It was self preservation. And so which I guess you could call as maybe a good intention for yourself. But there's also. You also see this and you help build their business and social medias and grow. You also see this, though, where people are, I call it pridefully humble. They believe that if they appear humble or self deprecating publicly, then that will elevate their status because then they're appearing humble. So their efforts to self deprecate themselves is really a prideful action. It's really doing something that's counter love or counter humility in that context. So how does that play? Like, when you're actually thinking of what it really was, it's not love. What would be a better word to define that? Because there's a lot of people catch. I catch myself in this cycle sometimes where I really want something. I think it's for the right reason, but maybe it's really just because I don't want to let go of the fact that it's not for me. What's a better word? So we can label that experience as something different than love so that doesn't get entangled. At the Animal alliance, we are working to create a world where no pet is euthanized due to overpopulation. Our Span Neuter programs are making a difference, but we need your help. Visit theanimalalliance.org to see how you can get involved. Together we can save lives.

And I wouldn't, I wouldn't call it love, but I think it's a lot of our society's understanding of love. For me, it's like it's just wounds. It's our wounds. It's like our unhealed parts of us, like these inner boys or girls crying for Help, you know, And I'm not sure what we would term that. I think the word trauma is thrown too around way too much, you know, But I think it's really, we're allowing our pain or subconscious pain to be in the driver's seat of our high and like blocking our highest self. So I don't know, I'd have to think on like a good actual word or term for that. But I don't interpret it as genuine, pure love. I. I would say misdirected love, misguided love, misunderstood love, you know, wounded love, you know.

Yeah. It's interesting when we are. When my wife and I were dating, I decided, well, I was raised by my mom who said love is unconditional. It's like you love yourself and if you love yourself, then you love other people because you can only love somebody else to the extent that you love yourself. And I decided at a young age I'm going to love myself. You with all my flaws, with all my fuck ups. Like I'm just gonna love myself. Cause that's a great. I have to sleep at night and I like loving myself regardless of all my things that go on. And as a result I love everybody else. And I think that there's a. I see a lot of people and saw a lot of people even in high school who didn't love themselves and would self like harm themselves emotionally. And so then I would tell everybody I love them. So I told everybody I love them very early on in my life. And in high school that's a little tricky because then all these girls think you like them or. And I'm like, wait a second. I never say I liked. I'm not even attracted to you, but I love you, you know, and, and so at a young age I end up writing this definition of love that I would like give to people before I told them that I love them. Just so that they were absolutely clear, like this is what I mean when I use this word, love. So then I'm dating my wife and it's like the third date and she's now coming into my sphere of how I interact with people and she's seeing me tell all these people that I love them. And so it was one of probably our, it was probably our third or fourth conversation. She's like, how do I like if you love everybody, like what makes me special? What make. Why do you want to spend time with me if you just love everybody? And so I was like, well, here's my definition of love. I pulled it out and I, like, went line by line and I said, look, there's a difference between, like, love and loyalty. Because love, I can't withhold love from somebody else without withholding it from myself. And so I'm not doing that. Like, I'm not going down that pathway of not loving. But when it comes to loyalty, I can determine who I'm going to be the most loyal to. So those are two words that I've kind of separated in, in my vocabulary.

I'll just add to that a way in which I explain it. I parallel it with grief. I can't remember if we hit this last episode, but I don't think there's a hierarchy in grief. And to me, grief is actually just a manifestation of love. It's the pain of love. But grief, I think there's a depth chart. There'd be certain things I could grieve that are going to be less intense and less deep than the loss of my daughter. It's not a hierarchy. And I see the same thing with the energy of love. I can love everyone, but there's going to be a depth chart to the depth in which I allow access to the deepest parts of me. I give the most of me, and that's going to be my deepest experiences of love. But with that, I can also love all. And the thing that I think gets tricky about unconditional love is also remembering for some people that that doesn't mean we don't have boundaries and doesn't mean we don't have standards, because otherwise we can fall into enabling. We can fall into, you know, martyr. We can fall into self sacrifice because we feel obligated because we, quote, unquote, love someone. So we should stand by over and over and over after things that could be destructive. And sometimes love is loving enough to draw boundaries and create space for ourselves and for that other person. And boundaries, in my experience, are often weaponized where people will slam a door as a boundary and they'll have judgment and resentment. And I'm drawing a boundary. That's not a healthy boundary. Healthy boundary is literally like, okay, here's my standard. It's my needs, this is yours. We're going to draw a boundary. We're going to clean up the space. And I really am loving you into whatever you want. But that doesn't need to come at the withdrawal or the sucking of my energy and my emotional capital. So, yeah, just a couple thoughts I had from what you said, but I think it's very interesting conversations around that.

Yeah, well, something that you kind of opened up with is the idea of expanding versus filling. When I was explaining this to. Again, part of this conversation is like, I grew up on farmland, so this is the way I think of silos. And they have these big boon arms that let foot grain into the silos. They dump it in the bottom, and it fills up the silo from the top. And the idea of a silo is like, if that's your emotional soul, boundary is your. Is your silo. You get to choose who allow. Who you allow to pour into that silo. So you don't have to accept everybody's words, thoughts, opinions, whatever. Like, you can close the hatch and don't accept anybody else. But also, if your silo is empty, then you can't give it to somebody else. And it's nobody else's job to fill your silo like your silo. Ideally, you're filling it from the bottom up, and then you're donating to other people's silos. But the codependency is like, I can only have my silo full if you pour into it versus an interdependency. Says, my style is going to be full every day, regardless whether you pour into it or not. Obviously, I appreciate people pouring into me, and.

Sure you do.

Who doesn't? But you have the control and you're comfortable closing that closing that has to say, yeah, I'm just not going to let you pour into me today. I don't need that. And sometimes. Sometimes that's not necessarily a. Like, maybe you know, you're empty and you know that you've allowed people to pour into it and that you have to shut it before you're full. You have to stop letting people as a. Hey, I recognize that I'm now dependent on you filling my silo, and I need to shut my silo so I can figure out how to fill it without you before I let you back in. Even though you always have the best intentions to love me, I. I need to be the one to control my own self and say, look, I need to figure this out for myself. And that's a boundary of saying, please don't love me. For lack of a better word, please don't do that right now because I want to discover who I am before I get your opinions of me.

100%. 100%. Yeah.

Which is just a fascinating thing. So let's. I want to just finish this conversation with you. After your. Your. Your daughter passed away and your partner had to go kind of deal with his stuff, you dealt with your Stuff you were still together for a minute after that process, Correct?

On and off for years. Yeah.

And what was the, what was the point at which you finally recognized. And maybe this, maybe the allowance happened and this was the final let go. Or maybe you recognized the allowance before and then you did just end up growing apart inside of the allowance of different ways of growth. So was that allowance offered and that was the final split or was it a gradual just growing apart inside of the allowance of people growing who they wanted to become?

Oh, it's such an interesting question. So I would say that it was probably both. You know, like, I think it was naturally kind of happening in the building of rebuilding of our own worlds. Like we both had to rebuild in different ways. We both had to figure out what we wanted. We both were, you know, overcoming shock and trauma and different things and so having our individual paths and then shared experiences. I think two things really supported me in, in the, the shift and, and it was, you know, it's more grief, of course, but one would be that I'm a big process person. I'm very much attached to the process. And so I had to feel like, did I do everything that I could do to give and to look at this in different angles and to see how this could possibly continue? Did I do everything that I could process wise? And if so, then we have to let go of the result. And that's how I enter anything in business. Whatever the result is going to be. We just had a launch. Whatever the result is going to be, I'm not as worried about. I want to feel like I did everything that I could do in the process to generate whatever the result may be. And then it's just feedback and adjusting. And so that's a much less emotional expression of it. It's easier to do in business than it is in relationships. But that was one thing. Do I really feel like I've. I've shown up powerfully, I've done my work, I've communicated, we've done our own counseling, we're doing our own lives. Like were in the conversations. Like we're, you know, trying whatever it might be, like date nights on set, you know, whatever, like trying the things. And then I think the second one was recognizing what is the energy in that is mostly driving my stain. And that was a really hard conversation to have with myself because if I got really quiet and honest, it was a lot of fear, it was a lot of grief, it was a lot of judgment, there was a lot of shame. So it was fear of Judgment of others, fear of shaming from others, fear of people saying the daughter was a mistake, this relationship was a mistake. You know, many different layers that we won't get into here, but fear of kind of any public eye, fear of my own feeling like a failure, fear that I let my daughter down, and then this grief, pain that she would be more dead, for lack of a better term, if the relationship wasn't there because we were still somewhat holding intact this idea of Laden's family unit, my daughter's name is Laden, or we'd go places together and be seen as Laden's parents. Something is missing. So Laden felt more present through that relationship. And so if I'm being radically honest with myself, I absolutely had to realize that I was holding on from fear, shame, guilt, blame, grief, and me knowing that there is nothing that grows in those energies. So understanding that, being able to say, we've served our purpose, maybe our purpose was to bring Leiden in, maybe it was to redirect us. We've learned the lessons we're meant to learn, not beat each other up, not physically, but let's not beat each other up trying to get the other person to go somewhere they don't want to go and live away they don't want to live. So if we're choosing from love, it's not going to be force, it's going to be allowance. I think it was both understanding the come from of my decision making and feeling very confident that I wouldn't look back wondering what if? And that was what I needed to do in terms of the process.

Yeah. I'm just going to highlight two things now. I want to turn this conversation into your business because the overarching reality of everybody that I've met that's very successful in business, when it comes down to why they're successful and what are the things that make them successful in business, it really is deeply, deeply rooted in their personal experiences that now they've learned to apply in a. A business sense that provides awesome income. Right. And that's a, that's a wonderful thing. But that's also kind of why I'm doing the podcast, is because I think everybody has experiences that are undervalued by them. They don't know how to properly share their experiences in a way that can promote their life. When I read the scriptures and I think of what God is offering as a promise through, through the, at least the Christian narrative is that we can have all that he has and that there's really not much expectation of what to give Other than surrender and allow all of our experiences to be used as a way to bless the lives of other people. And so many of us, we hold these experiences close to our chest. We don't want to express them to other people. We don't want to be exposed. We feel shame, we feel guilt, we feel all these things. And that holds us back from allowing God to use the gift of the experiences he gave us to bless the lives of more people. And the people who have been able to expose the most of their darkness and use it for strength are ultimately the people who tend to be on top. Business wise, relationship wise. They just get there. It's one of the things that really stuck out to me about Eric Rock when he was speaking at the event was the same thing. It's like, okay, his transition was when he finally decided to allow his darkness to be exposed, to allow the things he was running from to be exposed. One of the things you said when we first met that we kind of started the last podcast out with is what the question of what do I believe I'm entitled to? And then you're revisiting that like, okay, this is finally the time to release the relationship is a full recognition of, okay, the answer to those questions. I'm entitled to happiness and these things. I'm staying in this relationship because of all these reasons that maybe don't lend to answer that. And you're not entitled to all that. So how does that now if we transition into what you do business wise with your process driven? I mean, I could tell from the. When I saw you on stage, I'm like, she is a process person, which is awesome. And if you've listened to these last two podcasts, the way she processes through her life is very process driven. And that's a gift. Whether by design or by experience, that kind of. You got led into has become a superpower of yours.

Oh, thank you. Yeah, I, my one of my team members, she's one of my content creators. She tells everyone and she's worked with a lot of people. I've never met somebody who's genuinely more detached from outcome than Melissa. And I do think that is my superpower because then you stay in your power because we're attached to the process because we don't have control over the outcome. We, we don't. You can, you know, create all the best content in the world and think it's going to do really well and it might not and you have no control over that. So I am so committed to process and I think if people could just shift into understanding how to connect to a process more, they will experience so much more freedom and lightness and growth in their life and business. But if we're speaking particularly with business, what I found is that a lot of people don't have a process. And so it's very hard to attach to a process when you don't have one. And so that's really what I do. You know, there's. There was a time, and I talked about this a little bit when I was on stage in Arizona, where it was like, am I supposed to be this, like, boss babe? Like, am I supposed to wear dresses and, like, you know, be at the beach? You know, I live by the beach. But that doesn't actually really capture how I build business. Like, if anyone's watching this video, I got my whiteboards in the background. Like, I'm pretty much working, working out or whiteboarding, and that's it, right? And that's very much what I love. And I shifted to kind of show that because I'm like, well, why am I even sharing on social media? I'm not sharing to be like, look at my life. I'm sharing to be like, how can I serve you? Right? What is the value? And so I'm a very, very much a process person. And so my foundational coaching program, which is called 90 Days CEO, has actually been running for six years now. One of my first coaches who's worked with some of the biggest names in the industry, Adam Roa, Gerard Adams, Ryan Blair, like, he's worked boss babes, like, some of the biggest ones, he actually said to me this week, Melissa, I actually don't know anyone who has had a consecutively successful running coaching program for that long. And I really do believe it's because the program is built on a process. It's not built on an algorithm trend. It's not built on getting more followers. Right? An outcome. It's not built on smoke and mirrors, sales scripts or weird DM messages. It is literally built on a process that I teach and I walk everyone through it to set up each month roadmap. So we just did it on Wednesday, and I walked 40 people through setting up their roadmaps and the exact process I have used in my own business for six years.

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So. And my teacher gets to play, right? I was a teacher. So I think one of the things that actually makes the program very successful is the educational component that many people overlook in the online teaching and coaching space. Because if people aren't learning, they're not going to get results. And they don't get results, they're not going to stick around, they're not going to refer, it's not going to last. So not only is it process oriented, but there's a very strong teaching component. So you know, I've been running that for six years. And then I also found that a lot of people then became their own bottleneck where you know, in their process they would be needing to do things but they didn't have the time or they didn't know how to do it, they didn't want to hire, they didn't know who to trust. Training felt too overwhelming, it's just easier, I'll just do it myself. But then I didn't get done and so that evolved. And I always say entrepreneurship is see a problem, solve a problem. So I saw a problem for people needing to hire. So I built an agency. So now I have ADT members in my agency that do anything from web design to video editing to social media posting to emailing to you name it. We do pretty much everything but bookkeeping and taxes. And, and so I built that agency. So then I have done for you services and then additionally I work with some very high level clients like Eric, who you referenced in a one on one capacity. So that's kind of how it's all evolved and it's been really fun to see but it's all really just been built off of process.

So what's been your, your, your most effective method? And maybe, maybe you already answered this, but just to be more direct about the answer, I'm going to allow you to do it. But you gained this detachment from the outcome through a lot of trauma and grief. Like it was one of the gifts that you got out of all of your life experiences is like, okay, I really am not entitled to an outcome. I'm entitled to me being the best me and I can control that and I'm going to do that. And so you've been given this gift to deeply like know that you need to be attached to the process rather than the outcome in your whole soul. And being other people hopefully don't have to go through that much trauma to experience the same gift. Rather get learn through wisdom rather than personal experiences. Right. So what has been the Most effective way for you to transfer that gift to them through a wisdom transfer rather than a personal experience transfer.

Yeah, so I literally show them how we need to make decisions from data and follow a process. The monthly sounds silly, but the monthly roadmapping, it's really a proprietary system that I built with my own coach and I've never seen it used anywhere else and I've never not used it. And the results show. And so we set this up at the beginning of the month where we set, we identify, it blends together Ayurveda, believe it or not, which is like three different dosha, energies of thought, action, reflection, vata, pitta, kapha. So we kind of blend that in, which is very much a Melissa thing, plus very data driven points. And then we identify priorities and we set the action steps. You have to have touch points, I don't care if you're brand new touch points to understand data, to understand how your consumers are consuming or not. And so what this does is it literally if you follow it, it just, it shows you a mirror as to what's working in your business and what's not. And what most people find is that their emotions take over. So I had a client, you know, call me and in a panic, I need more, I need more leads, I need more leads, blah, blah, blah. And he's in this whole story that people don't take him seriously, he can't do this, how's he going to pay his bills? So he is emotionally taken out. Very common. Okay, this is one example of hundreds I've had. And so we sit down and we look at it and he was actually getting a lot of book calls, they weren't really showing up. And the ones that did show up were converting. It was pretty good conversion rate. So I was like, we don't need more leads, we need to improve your show up rate. What if we put all of our energy there, we improved your show up rate and you kept your closing rate, you would double your income. And so we did that and he was, we were able to identify why the show was low, put new systems in place, put new supports in place and he doubled his income without needing another lead. But the emotion goes to a panic of scarcity and I need more leads. Whereas the system, this like very proprietary system that we use literally just creates a feedback loop for you to see where you're actually leaving money on the table. So this, I do it the first, the first call of every month. I walk people through it because I am a stickler, because I Can't actually help somebody build strategy. If I'm building their strategy based off their emotions and their stories they're telling themselves about what's going on.

Well, I think, I think also before, before we move on, a lot of people are taught to, like, find what your strengths are and do more of that. Just kind of not get okay at your weaknesses. But there's whole books on that are written on, like, why go focus on your weaknesses when you could double down on your strengths? But I think that what you just shared is a real thing. That when you look at data, sometimes people think that working harder is smarter or just doubling down on the lead flow. Hey, if I'm really great at creating leads, let's just double down on the leads. No, getting leads is absolutely an important thing. But sometimes you actually need to go work on what's not working. You need to go into the thing that you're not strong at, and maybe that's you, or maybe you got to say, okay, I'm not good at that. I need to hire somebody to do that. But you actually do need to go work on the thing that's not working to get more, not work on the thing that you're already doing great at. Yes, you could do more of that, but more of that just leaves more people unserved rather than actually served.

100%. Yep. And I, I always look at most people focus on, to your point, more. I need more. This. I have to do more of this. I have to work harder. I gotta do this. And actually what I do and what I think my superpower is, is really identifying where they're leaking out, where the holes are. So, like, let's close the holes, let's monetize more, let's generate more just by closing the holes. Then we can look to add. Then we can look at expansion. But you know, imagine your silo before. If there are holes in the silo, doesn't matter what's being poured in. So that's ultimately what I do is I, as I come in and I just find the holes in the silo and we close them, then we can look at adding more into the silo.

Yeah, you have to pressure test the system. And that's, that's. So when you're going in, how, how often is the process that you develop with, with each client? Because they could be different businesses, they could be different industries. How similar is the process to each business? Like, how. How tailored is it to each business versus. Is it pretty universal, the process?

So cool. It's like I just love it because it's actually the same process, but it shows different things for everyone. And I. I can't remember if we talked about this last episode, but what I compare it to, and I'm not like this isn't necessarily how I spend my time, but I say it works in my understanding of how plant medicine works. Whereas every single person, all different ages, all different lifestyles, all different traumas, they can be in the same ceremony and take the same exact medicine and they're going to have 20 different, wildly different experiences. And I say that like in a. It's the best way I can explain this. Like, it's the same kind of thing and everyone's going to get it, but they're all going to have different experiences. And I actually love that because to me that shows it's about the process. And then the process will individually and authentically flesh up for each individual person.

Yeah. What it exposes what the individual actually needs help with, rather than just saying, hey, we solve this solution. The solution primarily that's being solved, at least the initial solution is like the value proposition is for many people, as you said, they don't have a process. So come use this process. Then it will expose the symptoms or the underlying things that need to be fixed.

And then.

Yeah, that's where your business has grown to. Added on and whole agency to. Okay, well, we need some. A solution that we can provide to this new outcome that we didn't expect the first time we ran the process for this other person.

Yep, exactly.

And I think that's a, that's a whole area. Where did you. Who was it who mentored you on that next phase of. Rather than you just referring out a bunch of business to a bunch of other people, you saying, look, I'm actually just going to build a company that does the next phase as well.

Yeah, I think it was really. I mean, my previous mentor had built a, an agency, so I'd kind of seen the model and then moved away from that. So I had a lot of connections and relationships in kind of that model. But it started with just one client at a time. I didn't jump right in. I was testing it. So I would take one client who I was working with privately and be like, here, here's somebody I know. Right. Spin on my team or worked with someone on my team. Let's have her start doing these things for you and you pay that person directly. And I was taking away the training, the hiring that can I trust. And so then I tried it with another client and another client. And then it became very clear that this was a massive need. So it just began slowly growing where we are slowly training team members, bringing on new people. I mean I'm literally hiring like a new team member a week right now just to take on our growth and make sure that we are not ever compromising the quality of service we deliver to a client. Like we hold that very high. So when people come to us, they're getting trained staff, a wide array of skill sets and you know, eyes on. Because some of the biggest complaints I got was like I don't hear back from my person for days or they disappear or you know, we are communicating. We have a weekend staff assigned for communication needs. I said we're running this like a hospital. Right. People don't just take off. You know, a lot of entrepreneurs, they build their business on the hot on the weekend because they're really busy during the week. So we have now created shifts for weekends to make sure that we have constant eyes on what's happening. And it's been, I, I see this just growing and growing and growing to be honest, because it solves such a problem.

Sure. Are you operating a lot through. I'm going to call them a VA type platform as you're bringing people on so that your offer is more globally accessible.

Yeah. So there's a number of different levels and kind of agencies undermine. So there are some more traditional. We call them virtual experts. Our virtual experts. And then we have US based, we have Canada based, Mexico based. That might be more of the higher level content creation or might be more of the higher level website design. And even what we put in to structure is that like that higher level content creator can kind of train the virtual experts team to do the editing at the right moments and to get the hook in the right spot. And so that's a very scalable model because I'm not relying on one content creator to create all the content, but rather train a team under her to do so with her skill set. So it's been really cool. It's been really fun.

That's cool.

Yeah.

I was just curious about the expansion of that and how that is going to grow over time as, as it expands to different time zones. Because that's one thing that with different base that I've worked with in the past is like if they're not accessible when the, when you need them to be, there's nothing wrong with working with somebody in the Philippines or somewhere else. But if they're not accessible when you need them to be accessible. The weekends is one thing. Could even be during the day though. So that's.

Oh no, our team is online from like, our team is like online during US hours.

That's awesome.

Yeah. And that's an expectation, that's a standard. You know, it's just like if, if somebody chooses to work at a hospital and they work a night shift, they're choosing that and that's, you know, kind of what we do and the standard that we hold and people want to be in our company. You know, I do trainings, I do team meetings with the entire team Monday mornings and we do wins and we do culture things and I ground them in and remind them what we're doing. So like we really run it like a, like a high level company and, and people can meet the standard of where we need them for hours or we'll find someone else.

I like it. So in between our last conversation, this one you ran a, I don't know.

What'S called five day challenge. Well, I think it was a four day plus a bonus. Yeah.

So what was the, what was the process of that? What was the outcome? I was dealing with a funeral during that time. So I did not, I said I was not joining that, that one. Next one though, I want to join. But yeah, what, what was that process and what was the outcomes from that that you saw? And what, what things would you already know or like now reviewing the outcomes because it's not the goal of the outcomes. But what would you alter or, or what are you already thinking, okay, maybe I would do this better next time or different next time than I did this time.

Yeah, I've been running challenges. I was actually trained by Tony Robbins team on the challenge model that they often use and just how to like host effective events. I think a lot of people host events but like they don't understand how to be effective with them. And so I will honestly say I don't know that I would change anything. We had some back end tech stuff in the beginning because we tried doing something a little bit differently but that was fixed within hours. So it wasn't a big deal. But it was a well run challenge. We had, you know, E and I teamed up on it. We brought in our content creator Brit and we basically taught branding, messaging, sales funnels and content creation hacks. And so it was a topic a day. We had about 500 people sign up, a lot of people watch playbacks. We had about 300 people join our WhatsApp group. It was a free WhatsApp group. Number of people joined our community from it. So we opened our 90 day CEO doors and it was just. The feedback was unbelievable. Yeah, it was great. It was a lot of fun, it was a lot of energy. I said this weekend I get to catch up a little bit because we went right from that until launch. And I was coming off of two back to back weekends for events. So it's been four weekends of very intense. So I'm like, this weekend I'll be working, but I'm also gonna sleep a little bit more. But it was great. It was a blast. The feedback was amazing. If anyone listening wants the playbacks, I'm happy to send them along as well.

Okay. Yeah. So where would they go to just stay in your community? Obviously you have follower on Instagram, that's I feel like a given. But what, what websites would they go to or how would they reach out to you to get access to those playbacks and be ready and prepared for the next time you do something like that?

Yeah, we'll be doing one in mid January. So I honestly would say if you are interested in growing your business and understanding social media, grab these playbacks. They're like 75 minutes a day for four days and they're a lot of value. This will set you up for a really strong January launch. If you are in looking to relaunch something in January, which is smart. So I would find me on Instagram. It's gonna be the best spot. Melissa Dugalecki and just shoot me a DM and just say, you know, podcast playbacks and we'll make sure that we get those to you. There were four. We'll probably grab your email and the team will fire them off to you. We might put them in a private YouTube channel, figuring that out. But either way just DM me. And you can also just learn more about me on my website, speakingofmelissa.com where it tells a little bit more about my story. You can see pictures of my daughter Layden, see some of the client results and just see, you know, energetically if we vibe.

Yeah, 100%. And if you go back to, I think it's just two or three podcasts ago because we're going to release these really close. You're getting bumped up so the conversation doesn't get too lost. But go back and listen to the other, the previous podcast because there's a lot of the context of Even this last 30 minutes of talking about her business, a lot of that prep work groundwork of who she is and how she became who she is is in that previous podcast as and then this is really just a starting of that off the with a new conversation. So you want to listen to both. Thank you so much for one being willing to spend more time sharing this with the audience. I really do appreciate it. I'm glad that you were able to make it work in the schedule across all the busy things you're doing. It's an honor to watch you operate from, from this process perspective. It's something that I recognized that I need to be more, more unattached from the outcome. Sometimes you think you're there and you're like, okay, I don't really care about the outcome, but I think that there's another level of being unattached and maybe that's even just having actually not just being apathetic towards the outcome, but having positive confidence in the process. And so that's a, it's a good lesson for me as well. So I appreciate that.

Well, thank you so much for having me on twice and I can't wait to see what continues to unfold for us and collaborations and all the things in the future.

Yeah, absolutely. We'll catch you guys next time on the Fuel youl Legacy show. Tired of all those stray cats and dogs cluttering up your neighborhood? So are we at the Animal Alliance. We're working hard to reduce the pet population through spay and neuter programs. Visit theanimalalliance.org to help us keep the streets pet free. Thanks to support. You can go to theanimalalliance.org and together we can make a real difference. Thanks for joining us. If what you heard today resonates with you, please, like comment and share on social media. Tag me and if you do, give me a shout out. I'll give you a shout out on the next episode. Thanks to all those who've left a review. It helps spread the message of what it takes to build a legacy that lasts. And we'll catch you next time on Fuel youl Legacy.

Sam.