030. Walk and Talk about Going Big & Creating Safety in Savannah

Welcome.

I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Lueck. And this is the Doing Business Like a Woman podcast where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money is made to help you create greater impact and financial freedom one business at a time.

Well, good morning, my friends. How are you? I am doing something a little bit different today for this episode. I am in Savannah, Georgia and here for meeting with my business coach and my mastermind. And we're staying on the riverfront on the Savannah river. And I thought I would bring you along for a little walk and talk, talk about what I've been learning, how it's been growing, and also talk about this city that we're in. So, Savannah, Georgia, I wanted to just tell you a little bit about this town city. We're staying right on the riverfront. And it's the Savannah river, which is a port. Savannah is a port city. And I think it's from what my Uber driver told me on the way here from the airport, it's like one of the largest port cities in the Gulf of Mexico. And all day and all night, there's these enormous cargo ships, container ships, going up the river and down the river right outside my window of my hotel. I'm on the one of the upper floors of the hotel and I have a corner room so I can like see everything going on in the river. And it's so fun. I love it. And it's like mesmerizing. Like, I never really thought about that, but, like I could sit there and watch the boats go and ships go up and down the river all day long. And yesterday I actually saw dolphins playing in the water outside my window. And that was beautiful too. So Savannah is a very historical Savannah city, part of the antebellum south. And I'm getting a lot of this information from my Uber driver from the airport. So that's kind of funny. And it was one of the only cities or towns that General Sherman didn't burn. And so there are, there's tons of historical architecture here and cobblestone streets and huge magnolia trees and beautiful, very old looking homes and narrow streets and parks, they call them squares all over. And it's just a very beautiful place. And so the area of the cities where we are staying is a new area. It's like a newly developed part of the riverfront. So there's a lot of construction noise behind me or around me. So if you hear that, that's what that is. And I love visiting new areas and I love, I'm actually like a food tourist. I love eating local food. I've done some of that. But we've been in meetings all week and so got to tour around the city on the first day that I was here. And so if you want to see the pictures from some of that, I do have a one of my reels on Instagram. If you're not following me on Instagram, go and check that out. But it's melissam underscore Kellogg and that's how you can find me on Instagram. And obviously we'll have links in the show notes, but that is a great place to see kind of some of the pictures that I took while touring around a little bit. But what I really wanted to talk with you about today is something I've been thinking a lot about. We've been talking a lot about during the Mastermind. And it really revolves a lot for us women around feeling safe, safety, and trusting ourselves. Because when we trust ourselves, we can go bigger in our business, in our lives, when we know that we're safe and we know that no harm is going to come to us from stepping out and taking up more space and becoming more visible. I know this has been an issue for me as I've grown my business. Like in the early years of my business when I was primarily a writer, I could write an article, have my byline on it, you know, send it off to the publisher, to the publication or to the client and just remain kind of behind the scenes. And that was very comfortable for me. But as I have grown my coaching business now much more visible. And that's like part of meeting new people and allowing people to get to know me. And part of my marketing, right? A part of marketing more is allowing people to get to know you. And so that creates, can create some feelings of not being safe. Right. And I'm talking just in terms of my experience as a woman. I know there are definitely issues of safety for a lot of different reasons, for a lot of different people, people that have experienced trauma or people that of color, people that are in marginalized and discriminated against population. So those are not my experience. And so I just want to acknowledge that that is part of the human experience. It's not part of my experience. So I'm not really talking about safety in that respect. But just for me it's talking about safety as a woman, building a business, earning a lot of money and taking up more space, becoming like more of a thought leader and saying that, you know, stepping into my Authority and my self concept as, as that can feel very unsafe at times. So I've had to really, consciously, I've become more aware of that, right? So then I've become, I've been consciously like wanting to create more safety for myself, which for me really comes down to a lot of trust, like being able to trust myself. And this isn't only apparent in our marketing, it's also apparent. And like, if we want to do big things in our business, we have to be able to trust ourselves to make decisions, trust ourselves to make plans and execute on those plans. And so we have to consciously like be setting ourselves up for a trusting relationship with ourselves. Because the truth is that safety and self trust. Good morning. It doesn't come from outside of us. We can't rely or it's not even reasonable or not possible for others to create a feeling inside of us. Our feelings are created by our thoughts, right? So if we want to build a trusting relationship, safety for ourselves, that's going to come from our thoughts about ourselves. And so for me, I like to think about it as having my own back and creating a place where I can fail and not beat myself up for it, for example. Or I can, for example, record this podcast and not have unrealistic expectations and then beat myself up, up about those, right? Like setting myself up for success in everything that I do, setting myself up for success with myself. So not like, oh well, I'm not going to do anything unless I can, you know, be 100 successful at it. It's setting myself up for success by saying, whatever happens with this podcast, if one person listens or 100 people listen, still going to love myself 100%. I'm still going to have my own back and believe that my ideas are important and valuable and helpful because I know that they are. And my decision to record this podcast, for example, is a good one, it's worthy, it's a good idea, and just like have my own back on the decisions that I make. So that's what I mean about creating safety for ourselves. And we can do that in lots of different ways. I think the first important aspect is having awareness. Like having awareness of where you're beating yourself up about your decisions or beating yourself up second guessing yourself or criticizing yourself or that self talk about I'm not good enough or I'm not doing enough or I'm not, you know, visible enough or whatever the not enoughness is. I'm not making enough, not attracting enough clients or whatever. Right? We all have that. And so just Having some awareness around that and then have some awareness around where in your life or in your business are you not setting yourself up for success? And I see this a lot with myself. I've done this and with my clients too, of little things like making a list of, you know, 20 things that you want to get done today, but you only have like an hour block, you know, within your calendar that you could do them and only getting 10 of them done and then beating yourself up for not getting it all done. Like making a list of 10 of 20 things is not realistic. Right. Or whatever that is. But that doesn't help you to create trust with yourself that you're going to. That you're going to give yourself a list of things to do that's reasonable. So that's just one example. And there's a lot of different ones. Like, you know, speaking about, thinking about marketing, like putting a post out there and expecting all the clients to flock to you from that one post, that's just not reasonable. Expectation of yourself. And then beating yourself up because, oh, well, that post wasn't good enough, or I'm not good at social media or whatever. That's not kind to you. And so think about how you create trust in relationships you have in your life, whether it's with a partner or with a child or a parent. Like, I remember when I was a kid and trust was a big thing between myself and my parents, right as I was a teenager and like, starting to drive and go out with my friends and my parents would give me a curfew, and if I violated that curfew, they'd say, oh, this is a violation of trust. You have to earn our trust by, you know, respecting the curfew. And, and so it's kind of the same thing. Like, how can you build trust with a loved one? And how can you be building that trust with yourself? And I like to think about creating safety. Like, how would you create safety for a child that was scared? Whether you have children of your own or nieces and nephews or whatever, or a pet that gets scared, right? How do you create safety for them? Well, I know for my kids, if they're super scared, they get. And they want to be near me, right? They want to be in my embrace and so I can hold them and put my arms around them and let them know that I've got their back. Like, I've got you, you're going to be fine. And how can we do that for ourselves? And even in that vein of creating safety, like, like, I I was telling a client the other day, like, you're not going to give your daughter some chores that you know she can't complete or doesn't have the ability at her age, they're not age appropriate for her of and then yell at her for not getting them dead. Right? That's not how we work. Like we would give them something we know they can be successful at and feel good about themselves that they have contributed to the household or whatever. And so just the same way with ourselves, how can we create that trust and safety with ourselves? Because when we do that, the importance of doing that is that we then feel supported and safe to go bigger. And that safety and feelings of safety and support are not going to come from other people telling us, oh, your social media posts are so great, or I love your podcast, or they're going to come from what we are thinking about ourselves. And so I just have seen that in myself so much over this past year. And the more I build that relationship of trust and safety, the more I feel supported and free to step further into my vision, my future self concept, my authority. And that is how I'm going to build my business. And that's how you're going to build your business too. When you feel safe to go bigger and you feel safe with yourself to go bigger, that you know that you always have your own back and that no matter what happens, even if you fail, you're not going to beat yourself up about it. You're going to embrace yourself, you're going to celebrate the accomplishments, you're going to evaluate what went wrong, what went right or not, in that order, what went right and then what went wrong, what you want to do different and iterate it and keep going, keep stepping out and putting yourself out there and growing. And so that's really what I wanted to talk with you about today. And this is why it's so powerful to have the support of a coach. And I would love to offer this support to you because a coach can also help you through this process. I can help you through this process of creating safety for yourself and trust so that you can grow and thrive and just step into that full expression of yourself and make all the money that you want to make, have all the impact that you want to make. And so that is my dream and my vision for myself and for you as well. And I really treasure and love creating that safe space for my clients. That coming to the coaching session is like coming home. And I think that that is just creates such a powerful platform and foundation for you to move forward in your vision and know that you always have your own back. Okay? I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day, rest of your week. I walk through shell gravel here in Savannah, Georgia and I will talk to you next time. Goodbye. Well, hello again. I am recording a little postscript, a little PS to this episode because I gave some wrong information so I'm correcting myself. I've learned that Savannah and the Savannah river actually goes out to the Atlantic Ocean, not the Gulf of Mexico, and that Savannah, Georgia is one of the top largest ports on the Atlantic seaboard. So I wanted to bring you that correction because I said it incorrectly earlier. I had incorrect information and I've learned a lot more about my geography since then. So there you have it. That's it. I will talk to you next time. Bye.

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