161. Why Capacity Is the Skill That Sustains Your Business

Welcome. I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Lewicki, 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. Hello, hello. I hope you're doing well. I'm so excited to be with you today. How are you? If we haven't met before, my name is Melissa Kellogg-Lueck and I'm the founder and CEO of the Avanti Business Academy for Women. And I absolutely love helping women to grow in their confidence and their connections in order to create all of the wealth in all of its forms through entrepreneurship. That's what we're all about here. And today is our marketing mini masterclass. It's story time today. I'm really excited to bring to you a few stories today. It's so funny as I creating these outlines and so forth to be with you. It's been a really interesting kind of reflective journey, but it's been an interesting process. Process of thinking back through how the concepts that I can see so clearly now, like how they were playing in the past and as I have grown throughout my entrepreneurial journey. And so one of the biggest, most impactful places of growth for me has been in growing my capacity. And as entrepreneurs, as CEOs, we're always growing our capacity. That's what I'm going to talk about today. And I'm going to define what capacity is and tell you some stories. So it will become really clear what it is. And then I have a challenge for you at the end to think about your capacities and where you want to be developing your own capacity. And I'm sure that you already have. I think as adults, as humans, we're continually, you know, if we're growing at all in our lives, which most of us are to some degree, whether it's intentional or not is up for discussion. But for those of us that recognize that we are growing, we can also be recognizing that we're growing our capacity. If we think about the definition of capacity, so this is according to the dictionary, Oxford dictionary, I think it's Oxford dictionary. The capacity is defined as the maximum amount that something can contain, right? Or, and, or the amount that something can produce. So if we think about on our entrepreneurial journey, we are always growing our capacity to contain something. Whether it's number of clients that we're serving or team members or just containing the amount of followers and viewers and people in our circles, like that takes capacity to contain that, right? To hold it. I think of holding it. And then we are also developing our capacity to produce, to continue to produce new offers, new ideas, our thought leadership, intellectual property. Like, we're always growing the capacity for that as well. I want to tell you some stories today about— that illustrate how I have grown my capacity. And looking back at it now, as I now am intentionally, over the past few years, have intentionally begun growing my capacity All these stories that I'm telling you are things that I wish I would have known 20 years ago when I started my business, right? So we have this series of 20 lessons from 20 years, and I'm doing that because I am always thinking about telling these stories to the woman that I used to be, the woman that I was 20 years ago or 15 years ago building her business. And what would be really useful for her to know about marketing, about entrepreneurship, about being a CEO that would really help her on her journey. And so the lesson that I want to teach you today, talk to you about today, or share with you through stories today is to intentionally be growing your capacity as all throughout your entrepreneurial journey. As I always say, the entrepreneurial journey is just such an amazing classroom for learning and growing. When I think about capacity as a CEO, capacity in marketing, in being a coach, I'm always thinking about developing my emotional capacity, energetic capacity, physical capacity, and intellectual capacity. So These are capacities that are more intangible. Like you're not going to— we're not measuring them, right? But we want to be intentionally growing our capacity to contain more because our businesses will grow and we will grow and produce more without burning out. And I think burnout is a huge issue for so many people, so many women. And I'm going to talk to you today about how I prevent burnout. While I also am continuing to grow my capacity. So for example, if we're thinking about capacity, we need to be growing our capacity to market more, to show up and be more visible in our marketing, right? To connect and serve more and more people and produce more thought leadership. So that's in a marketing capacity, right? We have to grow our capacity as CEOs to be managing more, managing more people, leading, growing our capacity to lead and organize. And just, what is the word? It's keep it all in line, right? We have to grow our capacity to make decisions and implement quickly. And this all happens. With intentional expansion. And for me, just learning this concept and really seeing my growth and all of the challenges that I go through as invitations to grow my capacity has changed me deeply and has also changed the way I look at challenge. I think this is a primitive line of thinking that many of us have. It's just a human way of thinking that we're always seeking comfort and ease, right? That's just a default human way of thinking. And I always had this assumption or thought that someday being an entrepreneur, having a business was going to be easy. Like I'd get to, I was going to work really hard at the beginning. Like I knew that the first part was going to be hard, like getting this thing off the ground. And then I always thought once I got to a certain point, I was just gonna sail and coast. And I guess to some degree that is true and that happened in my development, the development of my business. But the funny thing is when you're in that place, there's a lot of dissatisfaction in that place, right? Especially for those of us that love growth. Growth and challenge. And that entrepreneurial mindset is definitely— we are attracted to risk and challenge and solving problems and trying new things, right? And so it is a duality, right? So we're seeking comfort and ease, but at the same time, once we get there, we're really not very comfortable and happy there. We crave the risk and the challenge and the thrill of all of that, right? There is a point where we can grow our capacity to have both, to be satisfied in both of those states. But I also think that entrepreneurship just lends itself for a lot of challenge. How can we be in challenge and enjoy challenge and grow in challenge and not make it a problem or not make it mean something's wrong with us? For me, learning and practicing and intentionally growing my capacity has been all part of this work about seeing challenges as an opportunity for growth. So I no longer get burned out because of how I decide to grow my capacity in the face of any and all challenges that come my way, right? That doesn't mean I don't feel overwhelmed or feel exhaustion or whatever. It's just how I deal with it in a way that grows my capacity rather than, rather than shrinking. Right. So we'll talk about that. Anyway, each stage of my journey has required growing my capacity to overcome obstacles and restrictions. Growing your capacity, like I said, comes as a result of facing challenges. Learning how to face challenges and grow from them is what creates a successful and sustainable business, especially for us as entrepreneurs. So I thought I would share a couple of stories. I pulled out 3 of probably the most challenging times. Over the last 20 years for me that I see as my greatest challenges but also my greatest teachers. And there were definitely points in each of these three stages, each of these three stories, that I— it was very uncomfortable, right? I didn't want this challenge. I didn't want this hardship. I wanted things to be easy. But in looking back, I can now see they were all points in time when I was able to grow my capacity and that growth compounds, right? It sticks with you. It's not like you grow and then you lose all of it. You continue growing. So over the 20 years, I have grown my capacity so much that I can handle the business, the life that I have now. So many people will say to me, I have no idea how you do all that you do. How you handle all that you handle. And it's because I've been growing my capacity for all of it for 20 years. And it— I've been growing my capacity for the things that I love and that I want to have capacity for. So that's a huge part of it. Okay, so the first challenge that I wanted to tell you about is starting my business. That's always the hardest part. And I, anytime I meet somebody that is starting a business, I think about this time. I can just go back there just in an instant, take myself back there mentally and feel the, just the amount of inertia that you have to overcome to get a business off the ground. And it's so admirable. Anybody that makes it through this first year, 3, 5 years of business is truly amazing. And I think when you, when I started my business, I didn't know if I could make it work, right? I had moved from Boulder, Colorado. So a larger, it's like a suburb of Denver. So a larger city, metropolitan area, lots of business, lots of opportunity, lots going on. To the mountains, to a small town in the Vail Valley. And there wasn't a lot going on there. So this was back in 2005. So I moved there in 2004 and I started my business in 2005. And I didn't have any assurance that I was going to be able to make a business work in that area. And yes, we did have the internet. But it was the early days of the internet. So there wasn't a large infrastructure of finding work for freelancers and people like myself. I didn't know if I could make it work, right? I didn't know if I could make enough money. I didn't know if I could find clients where I was. It was a huge challenge. But what I did know is that I had, I had desire. I had a desire to go for it. And at that point, being— I guess I was in my early 30s at that point— I had 100% confidence in myself that I could always make money. So even if I did start this business and things didn't go the way I wanted them to and I wasn't able to make money, I knew that I could do something else. And which I did. I did. I worked. I was a hostess at a sushi restaurant. I tended bar at an outdoor concert venue in the summer. And I did all kinds of little things. Like I told you, I think on another episode, I was a stringer for Judge Judy and went and found cases in small claims court for her show, for her producers, and just did all kinds of fun things like that. But I knew that I had confidence. I had a belief in myself, right? Then I, and I was willing to take the risk, take the challenge and accept the challenge to start my own business. So that's really where it starts is you have that desire, right? And then you make a decision to go for it. And I did. But that challenge of starting my business and creating that momentum grew my capacity in 3 different ways. It grew my intellectual capacity. I had to think of ways to find clients. I had to learn as an entrepreneur in the area where I was with the resources I had with the internet not being as developed as it is now. I had to learn and create new ways for myself to find work and, um, to prospect. And I had to learn how to close business. That was a lot of intellectual capacity that I was developing and growing. I also had to grow my emotional capacity, right? My emotional capacity to feel rejection when I didn't get a client or someone said no. And I had to learn how to work through that and keep going, right? Because we, like I always say, failure— or our successes are always built on a mountain of failure. So I had to learn how to grow the emotional capacity for that failure too. If I tried something and it didn't work, or I had a client that wasn't happy with me, or whatever, I had to grow my emotional capacity to keep trying and keep believing. And I think those early years of business We don't really, unfortunately, recognize and appreciate ourselves for the amount of capacity that we have to grow very quickly. And then I had to grow my energetic capacity too, to keep up the activity and keep building the momentum and fight through that inertia. And in the early years of business, you are the one that believes in what you're doing more than everybody else. And so it really grows that belief, that faith muscle, right? That you have to believe in things before you can see them. You have to know that, that it's going to, you have to believe that it's going to work out, even if you don't actually know. And so that really, I think, was probably one of the hardest times of my entrepreneurial journey. And maybe for you too. Is that first getting things started. And then another story I wanted to tell is there's been, for me, many different times in my entrepreneurial journey over the last 20 years that I have gone through changes in my identity. So for example, when I first started my business, I wanted to be writing. And I wanted writing to be the primary way I was bringing in revenue. So I had to become a writer. But before that, I was a marketing manager, a sales manager, and had my corporate career and my roles, my job descriptions. And so oftentimes that becomes our identity, right? And then when I started my business, what I really loved most about, uh, marketing and about all the work that I was doing before that was the writing part. And so I decided when I started my own business, that's the part I love. I'm just going to go in that direction and just be a writer. But there's no certification for being a writer. You just are a writer, right? And so that's what occurred to me, that I just get to decide that I'm a writer. And so that was, that change in my identity was a huge, a very challenging time in my development. So I had the desire to become a writer. And so I made the decision, I am a writer and I'm going to go out and I'm going to sell myself and my skills as a writer. And, and then it became the work of growing my capacity to become that. So I had to grow my emotional capacity to feel the fear and act in spite of it, right? And intentionally build my belief around being a writer, that if I decide I'm a writer, then I'm a writer. And so that also grew my energetic capacity where I had to keep going. I had to grow my ability to keep my energy of momentum and moving towards this new identity and behaving like a writer behaves. I had to grow that, and that was hard too. But then eventually what happened is I went out and offered my services as a writer, and people believed I was a writer and they hired me and I wrote things and they loved them. So I was like, oh, I am, guess I'm a writer. And that was so fun. And I think it was the same identity shift when I became a mother as a business owner, because my primary identity when I, before I became a mother was as an entrepreneur. Right. And becoming a mom as an entrepreneur was a huge change in identity. And it was a huge challenge for me because I knew I wanted to continue my business. I knew I loved the intellectual challenge and I needed that. I needed the connection with the outside world. I didn't want to give up my business in order to be a mother. I believed that it was possible to have both. And, but I knew I was going to have to grow my capacity. And with that, it was like growing my capacity to handle both, to be able to serve my clients and keep a tiny human alive, which was a huge growth in capacity, physical capacity, probably the most emotional capacity, because it's just a very difficult sleep deprivation. And a lot of that was really hard for me. And so I had to grow my physical capacity, especially in order to— I had changed my business structure a little bit so that I was working with only corporate clients. So I had a very few clients, but clients that were larger projects, larger, longer-term projects. And so that was easier because I had less to manage mentally. And I could work in different non-traditional work hours while my kiddos were sleeping or playing or whatever, however I figured it all out. So that's the way I decided to make room in my work schedule for having a family was changing up the type of clients, but I had to also grow my physical capacity. And I remember I used to tell myself, because as mom, as a parent of young children, you don't often get 7 to 8 hours of ideal sleeping like the health experts are always recommending. And so I remember telling myself, if I get 6 hours cumulative over 24 hours, I'll be fine. And so that really was a growth in physical capacity, which now the funny thing is, as I go through menopause and perimenopause and all of that whole changing, and sleep was really messed up for a while, I came back to that thought. I could fall back on that. Like, as long as I get 6 hours in 24, in the span of 24, I'll be fine. So I had to fall back on that capacity over the past few years. And fortunately the sleep thing has evened out and I'm getting a lot more sleep now. And I knew as a new parent that also was a season. Like I wasn't going to go on sleep deprivation forever. I knew it was a season. I knew it would have an end and it did. And so I knew if I had the— I grew my capacity to be able to fully function as a business owner and a mom. Of kids that stayed home, I grew my capacity to handle both of those things physically with 6 hours of sleep. And that was my physical capacity that I grew at that, in that season. And then the third story I wanted to tell you about, and I know we're getting long here, but the third story I wanted to tell you about is a time where I had a 2-year downturn in my business. And which challenges bring our opportunity to grow our capacity. So that was definitely a huge challenge, right? And it was an invitation for me to really grow my capacity. And in those times, it's really hard to think about, oh, this is a gift for me. And all those things that we hear people say, how is this happening for you, not to you? And yes, those can be helpful. But when you're in it, it doesn't feel— it can feel terrible. Right. And for me, being able to, to accept the hard has been so much more helpful than thinking about how is this for me, but thinking that I'm neutrally, I can look at my business results and I can see that they have gone down. And this is a really hard time. And I can— I was able to just state that as a fact and make that a neutral fact that this is a hard time, and then see it as a challenge, and then decide, is this a challenge that I want to overcome? Do I want to just give in to this and quit and give it all up? Or do I want to face the challenge and conquer it? And so I decided I went through a period of disillusionment with my business where I didn't really like what I was doing. It just didn't feel right. I wasn't, it was, I just didn't enjoy it. So I knew that it was time for a change and that lack of enjoyment led to a downturn in business. And so I had to really have a thought, think about, is this a challenge that I want? Do I want to just give this up and get a job and be a career person and do something else? Or do I want to accept this challenge and overcome it? And I decided I wanted to overcome it. I decided that I knew that there was more for me, more that I had, more capacity, right? More offer, and I wanted to offer more, and I wanted to grow my business. I wanted to scale my business. And so I accepted the challenge. And as part of that, and as part of the turning around of my business, I had to really grow my emotional capacity, right? I had to grow the ability, the capacity to experience experience the failure, be in the hard, feel how hard it is, and decide to go anyway, right? I had to learn how to experience it, process feelings of failure, humiliation, whatever else, and not make it about me and decide to keep going. And so that's the emotional capacity that I developed at that time. I had to develop my intellectual capacity, right? I had to develop the capacity to problem solve and to problem solve from a point of not making the downturn about fundamental flaws in me, right? I— we— so often I see And I've done this myself. I did this for years, like problem solving from the point of I am the problem, right? Fundamentally flawed. And that's not a very generative, effective problem-solving strategy for entrepreneurs. So just, we could throw that in the trash and that's our brain's easy way out. You just suck. You're never going to get it. You should just quit now. That's the easy way out, but the hard way and the way the challenge is inviting us into is to really evaluate deeply, understand our business, our marketplace, our economic conditions, our time that we're in deeply and problem solve there. And so that obviously developed my intellectual capacity. And it's what makes me such an amazing coach now is I have developed such great problem-solving ability. I can sit with any entrepreneur anywhere with any kind of problem and really help them gain some traction on that problem. And then I had to also develop my energetic capacity. Which for me was really growing my faith and trust in the work I was doing, in the work I wanted to be doing, um, having faith that there's demand in the world, that there's plenty of clients to serve, right? Even when the other side of my brain was like, no, there's no evidence of that. And I had to believe in the face of, uh, not being able to see. And that's really what faith is, right? Is faith is believing even when you can't see it. So those are the stories I wanted to share with you today about some of the most challenging periods in my business growth and how it has helped me to grow my capacity. And like I said before, growing your capacity is one of the greatest skills and practices that will help you to create a sustainable, long-lasting, successful, profitable business. I know how that it's the one of the most important things that I've done in my entrepreneurial journey is to intentionally grow my capacity. And so I want to invite you and challenge you today as we wrap up to just think about your greatest challenges that you have faced on your entrepreneurial journey. And even right now where you're feeling overwhelmed or burned out, just have some awareness around that. Maybe journal about those and think and journal about whether those are areas. So if we just come to a place and say, okay, the challenges are here, the challenges are here, they're present and they are hard. And they're causing a lot of feelings, right? Pain, maybe. So think about, even in that hard, where do you want to grow your capacity? Do you want to accept the challenge? Do you have a desire to overcome these challenges? And, and then come back next week, and I'm going to teach you how we can really overcome those challenges and grow your capacity and use anything that happens in your business and in your life as an opportunity for growth and an opportunity for strength and an opportunity for aliveness, right? Because it's in the challenge, in overcoming these obstacles, in taking the risk that we feel most alive. And so I want to invite you into that And it, it applies to our marketing too, right? Because when we are in the work and having experiences and having challenges and overcoming them and sharing that with the world, that's what people want to be a part of. Right. And so that's how we bring it all back to our marketing and our communication. If I can connect you to your, to yourself, and to your desire in the face of those challenges, then there's so much gold in there. So we're going to talk all about that next week, and I'm so excited. But yeah, think about some of your greatest challenges that you're facing, where you feel overwhelmed, where you feel burned out, and think about, are those challenges that I want to overcome? Are those missions that I want to accept? Think about that. Okay. All right. And I am going to see you right back here next week. We'll talk about how we actually grow our capacity and the different kinds of capacity. I'm going to give you an overview because we could go on for weeks and weeks about this, but I'm going to break it down into the most useful ways that you can grow your capacity intentionally and use that to expand yourself, expand your business, expand your impact, expand your reach, and, and enjoy it all. Right? Okay. All right, have a great week and I will see you very soon. Bye. Hey, if you like this podcast, I want to invite you to become part of my community by signing up for my Friday Selly. The link is in the show notes. Each Friday, I'm going to deliver to your inbox my weekly celebration as well as my thoughts on the latest in business and marketing. I want to keep you in the know about my upcoming events, free trainings, book clubs, all the fun things, even some free gifts. And of course, I'm going to let you know about these new podcast episodes. I'll see you there.