Melissa Kellogg Lueck talks with Sandra Yancey, founder of E Women Network, about the 2025 Women's Success Summit and their goal to help a million women build million-dollar businesses. They discuss resilience, profit strategies, and what it takes for women entrepreneurs to succeed.
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.
All right, we're live. Good morning, everybody. So glad to be with you today. And I have a really special guest with me today. We've just been chit chatting and Sandra Yancey is here. And let me introduce myself real quick. I always assume everybody knows, but you know, not that they don't. My name is Melissa Kellogg Luick, and I'm the managing director of E Women Network here in Northern Colorado. I'm also a marketing and entrepreneurship coach for women. And I have with me live today Sandra Yancey, who is the founder and CEO of E Women Network. And we're here to talk about our 2025 Women's Success Summit that's coming to Northern Colorado. And I'm so excited. So, Sandra, do you want to give us a little intro of you and we'll dive in and talk a little bit, have a exciting preview of the event? And I have another fun question for you, so.
Okay. Well, first let me just say hello, everyone. It's great to be here with Melissa and you as well. And I am so looking forward to coming to Northern Colorado on April 8th. Melissa will give you the details on that. But just a really exciting time, I think, to be a woman entrepreneur. I have have been running ewomennetwork for. I can't believe this, Melissa. A quarter of a century. It's crazy to think it's been 25 years. And I've been through a lot of ups and downs over those 25 years. And what I know is just Covid is just another hiccup. Before that, it was the market crash, the housing crash. Before that, for me, it was SARS when I was opening up Canada. Before that for me in the early 2000s was the Internet bust. So it just feels like every four or five years, there's always something. And I think as an entrepreneur, the real art of surviving the long haul is just making sure that you have your profit power in place so that you can sustain and or pivot and make changes depending on what's going on in the economy, what's going on in the market, what's going on in your town or city, what's going on, you know, in the whole entrepreneurial space and just being able to respond to the constant changes.
Yeah. And I think that's such a great message right now because, you know, with. There's always change going on. That's the only constant, right.
Is change.
But. Yeah, but there's a feeling, I think right now among a lot of business people that with all the shifting and administrations and whatever else is going on in the world, but we have to be able to pivot for, you know, Bob and me, as I like to say.
Yeah. You know, and the truth of the matter is, in my 25 years, I've had three Democratic presidents and three Republican presidents. And so I just have to say that no matter who's in office, you know, I wake up every day and, and I focus on the things that I can impact, the customers, lives that I can change. And while I'm doing that, I'm just kind of finding my way through it, no matter, you know, what's going on around me, you know, just can't wallow in any one thing or the other. And you can't celebrate too much either, because even if you're on the right track, you can get run over if you just sit there.
Right, right.
Yeah.
Well, I'm so excited for the summit on April 8th. And I was thinking, I was actually writing not too long ago, my first summit that I went to in 2022, and it was such a life changing experience for me. I'd never been in a room like that with that many women entrepreneurs all talking about, you know, growing million dollar businesses. And I knew that being in that environment, if I could just surround myself with those women and spend as much time in that, in that rare air as I could, that I might have a chance myself. And so, you know, I just think that I just knew that that's the room I wanted to be in. And I jumped in with both feet. So it all started for me at the summit.
That's also the room you've created in northern Colorado. So, you know, I mean, you went and you experienced it and then you said, we need that here in northern Colorado. And I could wait for somebody to do it or I could make it happen myself. And that's what I love about your leadership and the impact that you've had. Melissa. Because, you know, I've worked with people that, you know, when they first came to me, they were like, there's no way. I mean, this whole million dollar talk you talk about Sandra, I'm just making $27,000 a year, and within five years, she's now built a multimillion dollar business, you know, and so it's so easy to say. It's so far away, it's unreachable. But the truth of the matter is the practices are pretty simple. And Profit Power is really about mastering, you know, six strategies to keep more, to earn more, and then keep more, and then scale your business with confidence. And that's what I'm going to come and share. And it's amazing to me, you know, how the concepts are pretty universal and you get to choose where you spend your energy and time. And I'm hoping that, you know, I bring the six things that allow you to say, me too. I can totally do this. I can walk out of here with tangible things that you, you know, I can start doing in my business to make significant change, to not just barely make money, but to actually, you know, have money left over profit, so that I'm really creating momentum money so that when things change around me, I can adjust accordingly.
I love that. It's going to be so good. Well, we're so excited. Thank you so much for your time here today. And one last question I had for you just to talk a little bit about, you know, the mission of E Women Network is to help a million women each achieve a million dollars. And it's such a moonshot. So talk to me. Where did that come from? I think back to the early days because we've been around now for 25 years.
Yes, it really came around. Talk about the power of proximity. I mean, success leaves clues, right? And so it took me a while to understand that I need to make an investment in learning from others that could turn decades into days. And that, you know, I was paying for it anyway. I was paying for it by, you know, the incremental kind of slow growth of the mistakes that I needed to make. Or I could, you know, invest in someone, write a check for speed, and have him really direct me. And I did that with Ken Cragan. And if you're. If you have Netflix, it feels like everybody does these days. Then there's a great movie about him and how he was the real cornerstone to make. It's called the Greatest Night in Pop, the We Are the World song. And Ken Cragan was the glue and the thread that put all the stars together. And at one particular time, he, you know, managed 48% of all the number one recording artists in the world. And he was a brand maker. He was a business maker, you know, and he was the business manager to some of the biggest stars ever, from Kenny Rogers to Dolly Parton to Lionel Richie to the Bee Gees. In their heyday. And the list goes on. And, you know, one of the things that he taught me was that it was easier to do the impossible than it was to do the possible. And that felt, you know, back in that day, like I didn't even understand really what it was talking about. But what he ultimately said was that everybody's doing what's possible. And so it's really hard to stand out and be seen. And if you want to do. If you want people to see, you have to be willing to, you know, do the impossible. And what I learned is that fear and faith are the same thing. You can't see them, and you have to decide which one you're going to feed. And so, you know, I started to do things that were impossible, including Melissa. One million women making $1 million in annual revenue. And I can't tell you how many people rolled their eyes at me. And I just thought, well, those aren't my people. I'm going to hang around the people that have done seemingly impossible things. And, you know, we're on track for doubling it every single year, you know, and that's a really big thing. If you just take a penny on day one and you double it every day for 30 days, it's $5 million. So, you know, we're on track to double the number of women on our stage in August at our international conference that have made it to a million, we're on track to double it. And in some cases, even we've got some chapters that are tripling it. I mean, we're going for it, and we're going to do what other people think can't be done and prove that, you know, you really are just one decision away from deciding to go back.
Yeah, I love that.
Let's do it. I'm so fired up about that, I can't even tell you. Excuse me. Okay, so thank you so much. And I know that's why you do the tour all throughout North America is that's part of helping that mission come to life. And so we're really honored that we're one of the stops on the tour. I'm going to put the link to register in the chat right now, so anyone's interested in being there, we would love to have you. And we also have vendor tables available and sponsorships available. So if you want to get more involved, please reach out to me. You can always DM me, but we're so excited to get to see you in just. Just under three weeks. So, yeah, it's going to come fast, and you'll be with us in person, so we're excited.
Can't wait.
Thank you so much.
All right.
Have you the rest of your day?
Okay. See you on April 8th.
Okay. Bye, Sandra.
Bye.
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