The Grind-Cast Quarantine Edition / Special Guest – Melanie Mitro

Count money, man.

My bag grits.

I'm trying to told him, I'm a beast, but...

What's up gang? Welcome to the grind cast.

Simon Areas here. Get ready. It's a new day.

What's up gang? Welcome to another episode of the grind cast.

Quarantine style. Get ready. It's a new day.

And I got my friend in my neighbor and in woman beast in business.

Melody Mitchell in the house. What's up Melody?

Hey there. How are you?

I'm doing great. I'm doing great.

Excited to have you on. Thanks for giving us a little bit of your time today.

Absolutely. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah. So I'm excited to introduce you to everybody that listens in on the grind cast

and expose super successful female.

And you know, as I started to get to know you a little bit better and dig in a little bit better.

You know, I found that you've only been in this game for what is it?

Seven years?

It'll be nine years. Nine years.

Yeah, nine years.

Nine years.

Still fast turnaround for the amount of success that you've had.

So those you that don't know, Melody is one of the top beach body coaches in the country or in the world.

And she's my neighbor also.

And I met her and found out more really about her when I went to London.

But John Maxwell, Jim Tristle invited me.

I went to London and we did this leadership retreat with John Maxwell.

And I met one of the ladies over there. I think her name is Tracy.

And she was a superstar.

And she started telling me about what she did.

And we were, you know, we were hitting it off like mind it like energy, great spirit.

And so she said she was in beach body.

She's like, he probably don't know what that is.

I said, no, I know what it is.

I said, I've done so many workouts with my wife.

And a matter of fact, I think my neighbor is one of the top,

supposed to be one of the top people in beach body.

And she said, what's her name?

And so I wasn't pronouncing it right.

So I started texting them.

I'd get your name back and she's like, oh, that's my girl.

She's a superstar. And you know, she's a beast.

And so due to the quarantine, I finally had a chance to slow down.

And I'm like, why don't I connect with, why don't I connect with, she's right around the corner.

We're in like very similar businesses from, from how we need to network and how we build things and use social media and,

and independence and, you know, all of that type of stuff.

I reached out to Melanie and me and her started to collaborate.

She let me own one of her leadership teachings.

And I have her speaking to our whole group pretty soon of leaders.

And then we're rocking the podcast.

So you've been in the game for nine years.

You're married with two children.

And how are, how are your boys again?

You got two boys.

They are nine and 11.

Nine and 11.

So that means if you started nine years ago in this game, you had a new board.

Yep. Yeah.

In a two year old.

Yep. Six months, six months old and like two and a half.

Wow. Wow.

I can't wait to hear about some of that stuff.

So four time coach of the year.

Beach body superstar, Melanie Mitchell.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about your upbringing, where you're from,

and kind of how you became who you are as a person.

Sure.

Okay. So well, thank you for having me on the podcast.

I'm really excited to share with your listeners.

So my upbringing, I'm actually from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

I am from east of the city.

So I grew up in the Penn Trafford area.

And I, you know, mom and dad, we've always lived in the exact same house,

house on the hill, grandma lives next door.

So I had a pretty just normal upbringing.

My dad and mom, both blue collar workers, you know, they worked hard for everything that we had growing up.

And my dad owned his own construction company for, oh my gosh, until I was in middle school.

He would do the long hours.

He would be up before the sun.

He would come home after the sun would go down.

And he would work really hard when the weather was warm because in the winters we would struggle.

And, you know, I remember my mom, like counting the change on top of the dryer to go by the gallon of milk.

And so, you know, my parents worked incredibly hard.

My mom stayed home.

She took care of my brother and I.

And when my brother was probably an elementary school, she decided to go back and get her associates degree.

And so she put herself through college.

My dad decided that he was, he actually has a degree in education.

He's a teacher of his ed teacher.

And so he decided that he was going to walk away from construction and try to get back into teaching.

So there was this period of time where my mom was going to school and my dad was substitute teaching.

I mean, life was, I remember that it was just hard.

It was, was struggle.

We had a pop up camper and we every weekend we would go camping and those were our family vacations.

And I loved it.

I have great memories of growing up.

And my parents just even looking back at this whole sort of how everything has unfolded.

My mom and dad are super positive people.

They're incredibly hard workers.

They never told my brother and I that we could not have something that we wanted.

But they always, always told us that you can have whatever you want, but you have to be willing to work hard for it.

And so they just instilled that work ethic in us from a very young age.

And I'm the kind of person that if I put my mind to something, I'm going to make it happen.

And looking back, you know, there were these sort of these defining moments, right?

So in high school, for example, I said I wanted to be a cheerleader.

And I had never cheered a day in my life, but I went out for tryouts.

I stood there. I watched all the other girls at tryouts.

I recorded the music. I went home and I practiced for like 24 hours for three days in the mirror watching myself, watching the other girls.

And I made the team. And it was kind of that first time that I realized like hard work gets you to where you want to be because I beat out a lot of people that had done this since they were, they were little, right?

So, you know, going on, I went to college. I was the first, well, yeah, I'm the oldest. So I went to college and I got my degree in psychology.

So I've an undergrad degree from the University of Pittsburgh. I went to the Johnstown campus in psychology.

And that's where I met my husband Matt actually bought him for six dollars at a bachelor auction that are like the best story ever.

He was the bachelor. I was running the auction as a fundraising chair and you're a poor college student.

So, you know, six bucks. That was like great, great deal. You know, that's a whole case of here.

So anyways, I met my husband and we graduated. And I went on to get my master's degree.

You got my master's degree in special education. And the whole time that we were dating and talking about getting engaged and getting married and starting a family, I was really like, I was dialed in that I wanted to be a state home mom.

That was my mission in life. I was getting an education so that if anything happened to Matt, I would have something to fall back on.

And so we planned. We planned our whole life around me being a state home mom.

So we had Landon who is our oldest, our 11 year old. And I went from full time to part time, took a different position.

So I could somewhat be home. Matt took a different position so that we could have a little bit more income.

He needed to sort of climb the ladder. And we were living in a three bedroom townhouse here in Mars at that time.

And we had our second little boy. And we made the decision for me to step away.

Now in my mind, and the women out there, they probably can relate to this. Like I had this very false perception of what parent hood like parenting was going to be in motherhood.

I thought for sure that I was going to be out shopping every day, you know, Pinterest crafts in the kitchen. We're going to be taking these fabulous vacations.

When you only have like an extra hundred dollars left over when you pay all of your bills each month, there is no going anywhere.

There is no vacations. There's no buying new clothes because your clothes don't fit anymore.

And when you're stuck inside the house in Pittsburgh in, you know, January, February, March, it's rough.

So I had this like awful transition into stay at home mom life where I hated being the mom that did the arts and crafts at the kitchen table every day.

I missed having adult conversation. I really had kind of lost my identity and I really kind of went through a low point.

And I made a Facebook post about eating celery and wanting to lose weight, which is weird because I'm a very, I'm a private person.

Surprisingly, if you look at my social now, you would never know that.

But I was, I really only ever used Facebook for sharing, you know, anniversaries and you know, things we were doing as a family, kids being born, the dog we got the dog.

And so for me to post that, it was like an inter divine intervention for sure.

And it was somebody that my husband went to high school with his wife actually reached out and said I can help you with that.

And so I started this, this fitness journey because of her.

And because she was sharing on her social media, her transformation and her results.

And so I started as a customer with the program in 2011 and May of 2000.

And so I didn't actually start with the business right away.

But you know, Matt and I were, we're just really having a hard time and each body really was kind of that thing that gave me confidence that really introduced me to nutrition.

Positive mindset and kind of started this business transformation.

So it's a little bit about the beginning and who I am up until kind of starting my business.

I love it. I love it. It makes a lot of sense.

You know, navigating through how you were raised, you know, so many similarities when we get more time together that we'll share when we're out of quarantine.

But the thing that comes to my mind when we talk about the similarities to our businesses, you know, I think that you know, there's probably was in the beginning a lot of doubters that you were going to be able to do something with this, you know.

And it's like, all right, yes, she's into this beach party thing. And you know, it's kind of she thinks this is going to be a deal.

Or you've probably coached people.

And now and in the past that have had their new, their start off and they have people doubting them.

You know, they even doubt themselves a little bit. Can you speak to any of those thoughts?

Yeah. Well, so walking into network marketing number one, everybody has an opinion about what you're doing, right?

So, and even just nine years ago, there was still a lot of negative stigma around it. And there is today. But I don't definitely don't get it as much.

But so here I am, somebody that doesn't use social media, here I am, somebody that has no business background, no marketing background, of no skill in this area.

And so imagine I go to my husband who's working 11 hours a day to provide for us. And I'm like, I'm going to start a business online, a health and fitness business.

So we thought I was crazy. And he also said, absolutely not. You're not going to invest, you know, ex amount of money to launch this business.

It's a scam. It's a rip off. You will fail. Like if you, and he actually said if you want to get a job, we'll put the kids in daycare and you can get a real job.

And so I'm stubborn, very stubborn. I will always get what I want. I am like persistent as can be, right? So I am like, well, I'll show you. I wasn't discouraged. I know some women, you're like, that's it. The husband tells me I can't do it. I'm not going to do it. I was like, well, I'll show you.

And so for me, a lot of how I handle the doubters because it was family members that would roll their eyes. It was friends. It was people that stopped like they would avoid me in the grocery store.

You know, it's just everything kind of became weird. And so I, the very first book that was recommended to me was the slight edge by Jeff Olson.

And I remember as a first time I was ever introduced to personal growth. And I read that book. And so in that book, they talk about the small seemingly insignificant daily activities that are repeated over time that create success.

And there, and I can just remember thinking, I'm going to be the person that shows up and outlast the competition. I'm going to be the person that shows you that I'm serious about this. This isn't just some random business.

And so for me, it was all about, I just knew that I had to prove myself. I didn't need to convince people, but I had to prove it. And I had to actually do that with Matt too.

So I spent a lot of time on personal development. I was running the Pittsburgh marathon. I can remember putting in my earbuds. And I would listen to there's a guy's name's Craig holiday. And I don't know if he's even around but he did a series for Beachbody.

And it was all it was called 90 days to excellence. And he talked about the mindset of a business owner. And he talked about the hustle and he talked about the sacrifice. And I would just listen to that on repeat.

And it hearing stories of how he overcame a lot of the things I was currently dealing with that helped me. So I think for handling those situations, I even look back now and go, man, Matt went out of his way to make it difficult for me to build this business at first, you know, because I was the stay at home mom.

And I was like, I, hey, babe, I need to go do this work. Nope, nope, you got to put the kids to bed or you they've got to get about, he wouldn't help me at all. And so I had to get up really early and stay up really late and work around his schedule until he really started to see that I was having some success with it.

I don't know it's like that stick with it prove you wrong. Just I had to have that grit and belief in what I was doing and I really, really believe that other women needed what I could offer to them. And so that was what I kind of focused on.

Yeah, that belief. And they really do have good products, good stuff.

Yeah, they do.

Yeah, the, you know, you're a leadership. You also have your own consulting business is chic. Yeah, yeah, she can't influence her influence her.

But but in your leadership journey, is there is there people that stand out to you or things that stand out to you qualities of a person that makes it in your industry or that you've seen become successful.

that don't, you know, any quality standout.

Oh, yeah.

So I have worked with a ton of people.

So in Beachbody, you sort of have your customer base,

but then you also begin to build a team.

And it's team of people that want to also start a business.

So I have been mentoring and leading and training.

And I think, gosh, there has got to be like 20, 30, 40,000 people

in my organization overall that a kind of oversee just to give,

you know, the listener some perspective on that.

And so I've had a lot of people come in.

I've had a lot of people stay.

I've had a lot of people go out.

And there is a bit of a turnover because you are responsible for your success.

You're responsible for your paycheck.

It's not guaranteed.

It's all based on your productivity.

It's not like a nine to five where you're going to collect a paycheck regardless if you stink at your job.

And so I look at the best people, the best top performers in my company.

They're the people that are their self-stargers.

You know, I may need to guide them and course correct and help sort of, you know,

troubleshoot things but they're, they take initiative and they get out there and they're,

they're coachable.

You know, the people that if I say, hey, I want you to do X, Y and Z.

They will do X, Y and Z and come back and say, so what's next, right?

The people that are creative.

So in business, there's not, it's not cookie cutter.

Nothing is cookie cutter and you have to make yourself stand out as an entrepreneur.

So finding your slight edge, finding what makes you different from, you know, the business down the street.

I was used chiropractors as an example because there's one on every corner, you know.

So how do you make yourself?

I don't want to score.

I know. I go on next door.

Yeah. And then I like best friends are chiropractors too, you know.

So it's like, you know, you have to find that that slight edge, what is creativity?

And so, you know, anybody can come in and sell stuff.

Anybody can come in and have a little bit of success, but you also have to have that creativity to keep inventing yourself and

keep in stepping up.

And so I look at that and then I also say, you know, being able to move from one failure to the next without the loss of enthusiasm.

Right? Because, you know, business is just a series of failures.

And you're like, what am I learning through this?

And so if you can have those foundational characteristics, then we can take it to the next level. Right?

Amen. Is that Winston Churchill?

I don't know. Is it?

Thanks so.

Okay. Okay.

I think that was my guess. We'll see.

Okay.

The next thing is, you know, talking about, you know, I always say that this belief in the sacrifice that'll take you to paradise.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, if you could rewind, you know, 10 years ago, you know, what you're describing was not exactly paradise for you.

And we never really get to a point of, we're always growing, we're always working on stuff. Nothing's ever perfect.

But if you could look at the two, you know, even looking at you with the nice white background and, you know, I mean, I, I got to get a microphone, Giovanni.

Get me to microphone set.

Look at her. She got a professional microphone over there. I'm still waiting from young.

So, you know, the, all those things that you have now happened through some form of sacrifice, some assuming, you know, to gain anything in life, you got to give up something.

So, so what are the things that you could remember being sacrifices or things that needed to be given up or that you would suggest to other female leaders or leaders in general, you know, that type of sacrifice mindset.

Sure. Well, I made a ton of sacrifices along the way.

So, again, like I said, Matt wasn't super supportive. So, and my kids were little and we did not have the ability to hire somebody to come in and watch the kids.

So, for me, I immediately, I went from this lifestyle of whenever we feel like waking up is great.

If we feel like taking a nap today, awesome. If we feel like going on a play date. So, all of a sudden, first thing day one structure. I started to create structure in my life where there was no structure before.

And so, I was like, okay, every day you're going to take a nap from one to three and it didn't matter.

I was like, at 12 o'clock, we have lunch. Then we start quiet time and you go for a nap. And then I would sit down at the kitchen table.

I would hustle for those two hours that I knew that they were going to be asleep or the one hour.

So, I started to kind of create these pockets where I would take a nap on the couch before I watched soap operas.

The other sacrifice was getting up. So, I started getting up at five in the morning because I knew that I needed to start.

I started to study top performers in business. And so, all of the studies were having a morning routine.

And so, for me, I started establishing this morning routine where I didn't want to be reacting to my day.

I didn't want to be waking up with Landon and Bryce saying, mom, what's for breakfast or having my emails blowing up.

And so, I started to get up. I would read. I do my gratitude journal. I do a meditation every single morning. And then I go do a workout.

And so, then from there, shower dressed in my office for my day, when the kids were little, when my kids were little, it was I had to get up early because I only had this much time before they got up.

I had to stay up late at night because I had to work when they went to bed at night. And so, the sacrifice came for me, right, in my sleep at the beginning.

On Saturdays and Sundays, I knew Matt would be home.

Tom, I want to grab this for a quick break.

You're at the morning routine. You just got me all excited about because that's, I mean, we're like fist bumping here.

I'm telling you, this is like me to a tee. This is what I believe in. And it's crazy that, you know, everybody that knows me knows I'm up in 5, 5, 15 every morning.

My body spirit is my whole thing, you know, about 8, 8, 30. I'm telling everybody that I'm done with the books, the audio books, podcasts, spiritual development, exercise for your mind.

Get yourself cleaned up and be ready to go. This way, you're not on defense the whole day, you're on offense and prepared.

So, you know, what would you say to people that, you know, it's great because you erase those excuses.

I have the ability to work with people that are moms and dads, but you know, specifically some of the moms.

And I've tried to encourage them in these areas, but they, you know, the kids are the excuse of, which is a hard hurdle.

But you can't overcome, but you found a way to still kind of get up early. You know, how did you process that and still get sleep and still get your job done?

So, I had a vision of what I wanted to create for my family, right? So I, and it started very small.

It was, I wanted to pay cash for Christmas. Then it was, I wanted to earn this rewards trip.

Then it became, I wanted to pay off debt. So I had this crystal clear vision of get up owning a house, owning our single family and we are still in our townhouse.

And so I had created this vision board, which is, you know, right behind me, I have my new one back there of all the things, you know, that, but I visualized that.

So in that moment as a, as a mom who's trying to build it from the ground, that alarm would go off.

And I would sit up and I would say, I am awake. I'm awake. I'm awake. I am willing to do what other people are not willing to do.

So I can have what other people wish they could have three to five years from now. And I would repeat, repeat.

I would just walk myself to the kitchen all the way to get my pre workout, right? And for me, it was like adrenaline. I would work out and my vision board was hanging on the wall beside me.

And I was so laser focused on creating a different life because I could see what was possible. And I just knew that, you know what, I have to be willing to put in the hard work.

I have to be willing to put my head down and make sacrifices. And I don't want to sacrifice quality time with the boys. So I'll sacrifice my own sleep.

And so that was that it was just mindset of I wanted to create something different, so bad that I was willing to do whatever it took.

What other sacrifices stick out to you?

The weekends. So Matt was off on Saturdays and Sundays. And so we had this agreement where he would get them up in the mornings. And so I would get up at five.

And instead of working out, I would go right into our spare room or the basement, wherever I was working at the time. And I would work from like five in the morning until 10 am. And he was in charge of the kids.

And I could crush out like almost, you know, two eight hour days in that amount of time. And that was my slight edge. So if you think about that, the rest of the world is sleeping.

I did that for 365 days out of the year for five straight years. I just freaking outwork the competition that was sleeping in on Saturdays and Sundays. Right. And so I feel like that was I was finding these pockets where I could just crush it.

And my weekends were like, I sacrificed sleeping in. I just I made this sacrifice, but it's paid off. Yeah. And I would say TV. I don't think I watched TV for five years. You know, I know I do what's going on in the world.

So if you know, my husband, Matt's he is the most stubborn man in the world, but he also cares incredibly deeply for his family. He would do anything for us. He cares about us so much. Right. And so, um, for him, it was very hard at the beginning because there was definitely this like miscommunication, this like, hey, I'm the provider.

While of a sudden, do you feel like you need to work? So we had to really navigate that, you know, as a couple at the beginning. And we had a lot of really knock down, drag out arguments about my business. And even to the point where at one point, he said, you have to choose your business or me.

And so we had that conversation and we argued I can remember the night that we just four hours, we just fought about, you know, the business and how much time I was putting in and it came down to I don't want to make you quit.

But we just can't keep going on like this. Like you are, I was working a lot and I really wasn't present, you know, was sort of neglecting a lot of things that that I never had neglected before. And so for us, we learned that we have to communicate better.

And so we actually sit down every Sunday for a very long time and we would, we would look at each other's schedules because he worked and actually Matt doesn't work anymore. So he retired, retired quit left his job five years ago.

I think it's been five, five years he walked away from his corporate career to help me with the business. But every Sunday we would sit down and say, what is it that you have going on at your job?

What nights can you put the kids to bed so I can work who's going to cook dinner this night. And we started, I would say, look, when you walk through the door, I'll have dinner ready, but I have a conference call. And so we just had to every week be dialed in to who needed to do what?

And once Matt started, and I will, but let me just back up and say, I didn't really get that sort of support until I started showing Matt the money.

So I worked for a long time to prove myself. I would say a good 18 months to prove myself. But when I said I was working, I was working.

I was playing on the computer. I wasn't like, you know, talking to my friends. I was like doing the dang thing. And so that when I started to show him money was really when I started to get his buy in and support.

So is that and it was communication. And then with a spouse too.

I think a lot of times we don't have support because they don't understand and they're intimidated by what you're doing. Like, am I not good enough or, you know, so that comes across. Sometimes you just have to look at this and say, if I was in their shoes, and I was so used to a specific way of living and all of a sudden, you're not cooking and cleaning and doing the things you used to do because you're obsessed with this business.

How does that make them feel? And so, you know, just kind of, instead of us always saying, like, this is what you need to do. We kind of have to look at it from each of our perspectives.

Wow, that's great. That's, that's great. The, you know, one of my favorite things, Natalie's more private than me. You know, one of my favorite things to do is talk about our past marital struggles to help people. I just, I love the sincerity and genuine ability to be able to help people.

To help people to relate through your struggle because whether people say it or don't say it, we know what's going on. We know what happened. You know what I mean? You, you show me somebody that's successful in a business and they've been together married for 10, 20 years. I guarantee they're going to tell you some knock down, drag out stuff. You know, that's what you were talking about that come to Jesus. And I'm glad you made it work. He said, pick the job or pick me, pick the business or pick me and you got both.

I did. Yeah.

You got both, which takes a lot of scheduling. You know, me and you were talking a lot, you know, before this about all I had this many, you know, I scheduled my whole week out this way. And I told you I got a couple more after this.

It's like to the moment. A lot of times we're sliding in the sliding in the first, you know, it's like starts at 1 o'clock. We're there in 1259 coming off of this one going to the next one.

You know, how important would you say it is to be a mom and a wife and a business owner and a consultant, you know, owning a consulting company.

How important is scheduling and how would you navigate through people that are disorganized and don't know how to schedule because there's 168 hours in a week.

So I always tell people there's 168. You got it. You got a 1 8 7.

you got to murder that one 68.

You got to be scheduled to the tea and you can get it all accomplished.

If you're not wasting 30 minutes here, 15 minutes here, half hour here, tell us about how important

scheduling would be to you and how to navigate someone to get better with scheduling.

Sure.

So this is like my jam productivity is the thing that I am most passionate about because

I think it was the thing I was the worst at at the beginning.

I wasted a lot of time until I figured it out.

So every Sunday, I do a planning session with myself.

So I review my goals from last week.

Did I hit the goals?

Did I hit the numbers that I was looking to hit?

I always say, you know, what went well, what didn't go well.

And then I set my goals for the week, upcoming week.

Right?

So that's kind of the first thing I do on Sunday mornings when I come into the office

to kind of have my quiet time.

And so I do that.

And then I look at the calendar.

So I use a Google calendar is what I use and have use.

I also have a paper one, too, but you kind of have to find your own system.

So I will go in.

And the first thing I do is, and this is obviously not happening right now because we are not going

anywhere.

But my kids have, you know, baseball, basketball, they're involved in both tournament teams

and there's practices.

And so that all goes on my calendar, right?

First.

And I put on my calendar, anything outside like events and family stuff, things we have

to do.

I always schedule in my workout in my morning time.

That goes in my calendar first thing in the mornings.

And then I look at the rest of the day and I start to chunk out when it's going to be my

business hours, right?

And so when the boys were little and I was building, it was, you know, two hours in the

morning, two hours in the afternoon or an hour here and hour there.

But I would down to the minute schedule out when I was going to build my business.

And then I would take it one step further because we can block out our business time.

But if we don't actually know what we're going to do when we sit down to do the business,

we spend so much time just mindlessly clicking around to try to figure it out.

So I have a separate sheet of paper that has my to do list.

And then I prioritize that to do list.

And like what are the income producing activities that I need to do because those are the things

that have to go first in my day.

So I work wake up in the morning and I say, what are my, what are my IPAs, my income producing

activities?

That's going to be the first thing in my quiet time that I'm going to do.

Those of you that are parents, moms that are trying to juggle, you know, kids at home

right now, there are things you can do when your kids are in the same room with you.

And there are things that you have to have 100% attention for.

So I do a lot of writing.

I do a lot of, I write all my own social media content.

If I try to write a piece of content with Landon Embrace in the same room, it's going

to take me 45 minutes.

But if I write that piece of content in the morning when I'm fresh in my brain, it's like

10 minutes and I'm done.

So even saying to yourself, what are my most productive times when my brain is sharp?

That's what I'm going to do the things that take them require the most attention.

What are the things that I can kind of answer?

I can do emails and messages and respond to things throughout the day.

So even looking at your times that you set aside and saying most productive income producing

first thing in the morning, management kind of checking in following up when everything

else is kind of going on.

And so having that kind of system and I will say every night, I always say to myself, could

I've given it a fingernail more?

It's actually on one of my quotes back there.

It says, could I have given it a fingernail more every day?

I say that.

Is there anything else that I could have done that I just could have been like, yes,

I would have nailed it.

And then I always say, you're not going to go to bed unless those IPAs are done.

That's your slide edge.

And so as a business owner, as a mom, wife, work in your business, right?

You're always asking yourself, even though life is chaotic, am I getting the most important

things done?

And then, good.

I love that.

IPA, you know, the people here in Pittsburgh, they might think that's a beer.

What was that income-producing activities?

Yes.

I like it.

I use RGA because it's a title in our business, Revenue Generating Activity.

Oh, okay.

Very similar.

You know, we've talked a little bit in the past about some of our mutual adversities that

we've gone through in business.

Is there one or two or what adversities pop into your mind on what it's taken to get

you from where you were to where you're at?

Even here in that story of, all right, for 18 months, you didn't have support.

First of all, God bless you for being able to navigate through all of that for 18 months.

That's a long time.

18 weeks is a long time.

18 months?

Hold on to the level.

You know, have the complete support and then be able to transition, make that sale somehow.

And then within a five year period, so you're talking about 60 months.

So from month zero to 18, one to 18, we didn't have the support yet.

And then from there, both within five years, you transition to where he was able to quit

his job and now he was able to help you with some of the things in the business, which is

amazing.

But, you know, people see the shine.

They see the nice house, you know, your beautiful house, beautiful family, all the things

that you have and the stuff, the glamour, the glitz.

But what they don't see is the shit, you know, the stuff that you had to go through.

So what were some of the obstacles that you could remember those hurdles?

There's a lot of them.

There's so many.

I will say the biggest obstacle, what everything was, you know, yeah, I had a lot of challenges

with support, with people supporting me, but I had a lot of momentum in my business.

So for the first five years of business, my everything was up.

Everything was upward momentum, upward climb.

Even if it was a slow climb, it was going.

And once my momentum and my business started to build, my team was growing fast.

I was attracting amazing leaders.

I was attracting rock stars to my team.

They were growing fast.

I had other top leaders that were getting the trips and going on those with me too because

they were rocking.

So I sort of was, everything was easy.

I was kind of on top of the world as the leader, right?

And so then all of a sudden, our company decided to adopt this on-demand model, where they

went from selling DVDs and these kits to now, everything was on-demand and it shifted.

We had like this huge shift in the way we did business.

It affected just a lot of our income and the way we approached the business.

And with that came a ton of challenges for my organization.

It was the first time that people were struggling, right?

To make money and we had to be very creative of how we were going to approach this, how we

were going to navigate through it.

And I am the kind of person that I want to save everybody.

I want to fix everybody.

I want everybody to be happy.

I am the kind of leader that will way over commit myself or I was that kind of leader that

would way over commit myself to make sure that everybody else's needs were met.

And I, we were all, so I could just tell everybody was all my top leaders were struggling.

And I said, we're going to run a house in Florida.

We're going to go on this team retreat.

I'm going to spoil the crap out of you guys.

We're going to master mine.

We're going to come together.

And all I could think was if I just get people in the same room together, if I just get

people in the same room together, they'll get it.

They'll get their fire lit.

Everybody will start moving again.

And I went to that retreat and that whole weekend had no idea that my assistant and one of

my leaders was recruiting everybody there to join another company.

And nobody told me, nobody told me for the four days that we were there.

And when I came back, my assistant had turned in her resignation.

And then I started to kind of get these, I started to get these messages like, hey,

something's going on.

And even when I approached the person, she didn't admit it.

And I could just see it.

I mean, I could see it.

I was getting the screenshots and the messages.

And so for me, it was the first time that I had ever been betrayed in that way.

And I didn't know what to do, right?

And I just absolutely utterly broke down.

And I was really vulnerable to my team about that.

And I've always been the kind of leader that as I got this, I'll handle it.

Like I'm stone faced.

I don't know.

And I was very action and I let them see that raw emotion.

And I, at one point, remember getting out the whiteboard and

being like, who do I think is going to stay?

And who do I think is going to go?

And what is going to happen to my business?

And I just let fear take over.

But the coolest thing happened is people stepped up.

The coolest thing ever happened is people that weren't top producers, right?

They were my biggest supporters.

They were the ones that were rallying behind me.

I just like developed a whole new respect for people.

I was like, I don't care if you sell a dang thing.

You were the most amazing person in the world, the way you just wrapped your

arms around me and said, we love you.

You know, you're the best leader.

And so looking back at that, that made me not take people for granted.

It made me realize that I can't save everybody, right?

That I have to set some healthy boundaries.

It also made me just have better relationships with people.

But gosh, I am so thankful that those people did what they did to me because it has taught

me so much about growing a healthy organization versus what it could be if I had stayed on that

path.

Wow.

Yeah.

Totally.

Yeah.

It's all similar.

I told you I got the no weapon on my world from that type of very, very similar situation.

And what happened on my end was just such a blessing in disguise.

It was a miserable two years, a year or two.

It went through this process.

And we come out of it and just like the coach of the year thing, over here they call it

something else.

And we won that the very next year after all this turmoil happened.

And the people that rose from that were loyal and the ones that didn't, none of them

made it.

None of them made it.

No one went to another industry and exploded and exploded.

Not one of them.

And all of the people that were loyal, that stepped up, it was a blessing in disguise that all

these people are now running the ship.

And it kind of got the weeds out on accident.

I didn't realize it was a blessing.

I was pissed off.

I was upset.

I was hurt.

Like you, I try to serve.

But then you also talked about the inner reflection you get.

You're like, oh, this is what maybe I could have done differently.

I don't take people for granted.

So I grew in that area too.

Look at it myself.

How did I allow that to happen?

What did I not see coming up the pipeline so you could grow from it instead of being a

victim?

You see what I could have done, even though that was BS, I still could have done something

to control that aspect of it.

You talked about attracted leaders.

Anything that you think a person would do to attract, you know, but our business is

all about being able to attract top talent, not just attracting anybody, but really game

changers that can influence people.

How can you advise people to attract others to write people?

Well, I do believe that if you have to have belief in what you do first and foremost,

if you don't believe in what you're doing, what you're selling, what you're promoting,

what company you're bringing people into, that's it right there from the beginning.

You have to wholeheartedly believe in the product or the service.

And the second part of belief is you have to believe in yourself.

If you aren't confident, and that is confidence is a muscle that we work every single day like

we do in our workouts, right?

So you have to have that belief.

And then when you have those two things, you have to go out into the world for me.

It's social media.

It is private conversations.

And I, number one, I post on social media as if I'm already the person I want to become.

So in 2012, when I was trying to attract top talent and even today, I'm talking about

where my team is going.

I'm talking about the fact that the train is leaving the station.

You can either get on this train or leave in you behind.

I was recognizing people.

I was telling my story.

I was telling the stories of other people that were a part of my team because I wanted to

paint the picture of what could be for other people that were maybe following my social

media or maybe you're connected to on LinkedIn or, you know, I wanted people to see that it was

possible because I knew there was another Melanie out there that was sitting in her living

room, feeling completely lost.

And so I would think about that person as I was creating my social media content.

And then as far as attracting top talent, it is, look, I may not have all the answers,

but I will, I will get them for you and I will lead you and I will be there with you every

single step of the way.

And that is one of the things that I say to every person that joins my team is, look,

I'm not going to hold your hand, but I'm going to, you know, I'm not going to be breathing

down your neck.

You know, every single day, what are you doing?

What are you doing?

What are you doing?

I go, but if you run, I'm going to run with you.

Right?

If you want to walk, I'll walk with you, you know, but I'm not going to drag you.

And even when I'm talking to people, I talk about that go getter mindset that you can

have anything that you want to achieve.

I let people know that it's hard work.

I stop using the word, it's easy.

Anybody can do this because that attracts people that are looking for an easy way out.

And I don't want people like that.

I want people that understand that you want this level of success, then you have to show

up and be willing to do the work.

So even in your wording, as you're thinking about your conversations, making sure that

you're bold and confident about what it takes to be successful and what's possible.

And I believe that energy when you put that out there, you begin to become a magnet for

those people, right?

And Simon, that's the same thing for you.

You've attracted people because of who you are and the energy level that you, the vibration

you put out there.

Love it.

What any tips on, you know, to lead through this pandemic for you, you know, that you've

been doing your using, because I would imagine it's maybe a less...

little bit less of a change for you guys

because you're already doing stuff from home?

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

I mean, we are a home-based business.

So I would say the hardest thing is all of our live events.

And we thrive on our retreats and our annual conferences

and our leadership is on where our rewards trips were canceled.

And so even in business, I'm like, man, we all,

like we're puttering out when we get to this,

you know, February trip and then our March trip

and then bam, that gives us the momentum.

We need to keep going and so we lost that.

So what we did is we did an on, we did a virtual event, right?

So we did a virtual summit.

We had a workout live, workout first.

We did a Zoom where everybody worked out

and then we did a training.

And I brought in my top leaders.

I was like, okay, best back pocket strategy for pivoting.

You know, we're creating opportunities for,

we're just looking at things very differently.

You know, in the chic influencer side,

we basically had to take our entire calendar

and just take the dry erase eraser and wipe it off

because every speaking engagement, every, you know,

opportunity we had is now gone.

And people are all of a sudden holding on

to their money a lot tighter.

They're not willing to spend in the, you know,

in the mentorship what they were.

And so we had, we made some decisions about

we're gonna serve people, we're gonna give free advice.

We're gonna create some lower ticket items

that can help to still generate some income,

but we're kind of gonna be okay with, you know,

maybe not hitting the exact numbers we want right now,

but we know if we serve really well right now,

we will get it on the back end, you know,

in the third and fourth quarter as things begin to turn around.

So we're, we've like pivoted into serve mode

so that people remember us.

They remember us whenever they're right,

like they have the funds to be able to be lost.

Love it, great stuff.

Unbelievable.

I could go on and on pulling stuff from you.

I even got some notes.

So you're awesome.

In terms of you deserve, you deserve everything

that you got coming to you

because you just get to start it.

This isn't the destination.

This is just where we're currently at right now.

We gotta go to another level

and I know you're on your way to that level with me.

Absolutely.

And I got you back anyway that I can.

So, but what ways could somebody contact you or,

you know, could you give some of your social,

you have a podcast as well.

I do.

I have actually have two podcasts.

So I do the women inspiring women podcast.

I've been doing that for over three years now.

So you can find that on iTunes and Spotify

and any place where podcasts are at

and then the Make Sheek Happen podcast is,

I do that with my business partner.

So we do those.

You can find me on Instagram.

So it's just Melanie, Mitro on Instagram

and I'm very active there.

I'd say that's the place I'm the most active.

And I do have a website.

It's just Melanie, Mitro.com.

Love it.

Yeah, I would go check out her social media.

She's a beast.

She gets me fired up.

Who fires up somebody that's already fired up?

You got some great stuff on there.

I love your attitude.

And I appreciate you joining us

and giving some wisdom and advice and knowledge

and fire to all of the people out there on the podcast.

Well, thank you.

Thanks for appreciating.

So it's for joy.

We'll sit right here.

It's a new day.

Count money, man.

Money back riches.

Find time told trying to told them I'm a beast.

But.