385 Melanie Benson: Own Your Bold

What does influence mean to you? Why is it important and how do you amplify it, authentically? Because if you want to succeed in business you must ensure people are listening to you and valuing what you say.

MELINDA

I’m Melinda Wittstock and today on Wings of Inspired Business we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who is known as the Profit Amplifier who prides herself on being a guide for conscious entrepreneurs ready to accelerate their influence and impact.

Melanie Benson loves nothing better than watch her clients’ businesses 10X their performance. You may know her from her Amplify Your Success Podcast, and I’m so delighted to be hanging out with her in September at the New Media Summit, where we are both Icons of Influence.

Today we talk about influence, how to stand out in a noisy marketplace, how to use mission to drive your success and build movements rather than companies, plus the mindset issues that often hold women back in business.

Melanie Benson will be here in a minute and first…

Now back to the inspiring Melanie Benson.

You may also know her by her former name, Melanie Strick.  She’s a Revenue Strategist and Business Performance Optimizer for conscious entrepreneurs ready to accelerate their impact and income by making their business perform 10 times better.  With over 12 years experience in corporate America, Melanie specializes in aligning visionary, game-changing entrepreneurs with the most powerful mindset, actions and strategies that propel them to a level of success they never knew they could achieve.

Melanie combines her extensive traditional education (a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management and a Master’s Degree in Organizational Management) with multiple advanced certifications in Project Management, Results Coaching, Neuro-Linguistic Programming or NLP and even a license as a Spiritual Counselor to get her clients past their obstacles and into impacting the world in a fulfilling, and profitable, way – integrating creativity and intuition with a honed “facts and data” approach.

Melanie is host of Amplify Your Success Podcast, serves on the Women Speaker's Association Executive Team, is programming chair for the Association of Transformational Leaders. and is the co-author of Entrepreneur.com’s “Start Up Guide to an Information Marketing Business.” She speaks regularly to many entrepreneurial audiences across the globe and spends her free time in search of the best spas and beaches in the world. She must be my sister!

So are you ready for Melanie Benson? I am. Let’s fly!

Melinda Wittstock:Melanie, welcome to Wings.

Melanie Benson:Thank you for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:I'm so excited to talk to you about what you do so extraordinarily well, which is helping people amplify their influence. These days, everyone wants to be an influencer on Instagram and beyond, but it's so hard to be heard in all the noise. What do you recommend?

Melanie Benson:Well, first of all let's just clarify why do we need influence, right? It's a word that's thrown around a lot. We see these people who are influencers on social media and then we hear about it as an entrepreneur, and I think sometimes people kind of turn off to it. They're like, “That's not me. That's not what I want to do.”

In my mind, the reason why influence is so important is no matter what work we do and what kind of business we have, we are inspiring people to take action to do something every day. If we are selling to clients we are inspiring them to say yes to our offer. If we lead a team we are inspiring them to get up every day and do what we want them to do to help us grow. Influence is the skill, or it's almost like this very intangible thing that we have to have in order to get people to listen to us. You don't have to have a million followers to have influence. What you do have to do is have the ability to have your message resonate and inspire people into action. That's what influence is.

That, to answer your question because I know I went a little off track there. I really want to lay that foundation. How we start to build influence is we have to believe and have full commitment to the work we are doing on this planet. Whatever that is. Whatever your business is about. If you're not 100% in it, and 100% committed, and 100% I'm going to move and accelerate this offer, these ideas, this message, whatever it is out in the world then people aren't going to listen to you. If you're not convinced about it, they're not going to be convinced about it.

I think step number one is you got to believe in what you do.

Melinda Wittstock:I love that. That's why you see so many entrepreneurs really succeeding now who do have a mission. The companies that they're building are, I don't know, bigger than just the transaction value. They enroll people as clients because those people feel they're part of a bigger mission. I think when we come at it like that, especially as women, yeah, we do do better.

Melanie Benson:Yeah, I think that there's a whole revolution right now. I think our industry, particularly in the online world is changing dramatically. We're moving out of what we would call a transactional way of doing business into a movement based business. It's like what is this bigger thing about? People want to, when people are getting involved in something the no lack in trust factor is so important. If they believe in your movement, if they believe in what you're inspired in they're 100 times more likely to join you, join your programs, join your membership, listen to your podcast, buy from your company than they will your competitor.

Having this thing you're very influential in, for me it's this idea of amplifying authentically. Really, if I boil it down. It's like I'm very much about how do I amplify you in a very authentic way and not just follow the cookie cutters. Not just do what everybody else is doing but finding your thing that you need to do and do it in a bigger way. You've got to find that thing for you.

Melinda Wittstock:Yeah, it's so noisy out there. We all, I don't know, it's so easy to fall into the trap of kind of like rubber necking on the highway, you know? You're kind of like oh my goodness, that's the new trend I should be doing that. What's that person doing? Feeling unworthy if you're not ticking every single box. I see so many women particularly getting into overwhelm and burnout simply because we try and do too much, or we try and do all of it rather than focusing on that one thing.

How hard is it, like when you're working with your clients, how hard is it for them to find the one thing?

Melanie Benson:You know, I think it's actually personality dependent. We know there's different personalities, right? Everybody is wired a little differently. There are people who need to have multiple things going on to have that stimulation to be their high achieving self. Sometimes it's driven by a wound, and sometimes it's driven by certain belief systems. Sometimes it's really personality driven. They need that stimulation.

Then other people see those people succeeding with 100 different things going on and they're like oh, that's my formula for success. Actually, what I say is you have to figure out how to perform at your optimum level. What's your best way to succeed? That might mean that you're the kind of person that has to focus on your one thing. I'm that kind of person. When I do one thing really well, I'm on fire. If I'm trying to do 20 things, my energy really gets destroyed. I don't have the ability to keep up with all of that. I find that I do my best if I've got one to three really core things that I'm moving out there in the world.

I think with my clients the trick is always like how are they wired? What's going to be their unique amplifier? Their unique way of doing it? What's going to keep them plugged in? Do you ever follow the Enneagram? Do you know much about that?

Melinda Wittstock:Oh, yes I do. Yeah, there's so many interesting tests out there. The Enneagram, there's all of these things. It's fascinating, when you do that whole, when you put it all together, when you do the Enneagram, Strength Finder, Disc, Colby. If you're a little bit woo perhaps your astrology and numerology. Put all that together it's amazing how accurate in what it tells you.

Melanie Benson:Mm-hmm (affirmative), there's a lot of similarities between them but I find I'm using the Enneagram a lot with my clients because it helps them have a better understanding of their way to get to the goal. A couple of things I always say is you've got to look at what's giving you energy and what's stealing your energy.

If it's draining you and you feel like all these shoulds and you're doing these things because you think you're supposed to or you should do them but they're not moving the needle we've got to unravel why you're saying yes to them. Figure out if you did it in a better way, if there's a way to strengthen your approach and optimize your time and energy could you use it better? If not, you've got to say no. Delete it, get rid of it, stop saying yes to it.

Melinda Wittstock:Oh, isn't that for sure. That can be hard, though. I think sometimes, you know, I think with all entrepreneurship at the end of the day it's a head game. We all have these limiting beliefs, you know, we've picked them up when we were little kids before we even had a frontal lobe and we created these stories. Seriously, like we didn't have a full deck, right? We can all forgive ourselves. We created these stories around it and those stories have persisted subconsciously through our lives.

I know when I work with a lot of women, I mentor a lot of women, I work with a lot of women in particular and there are all these patterns that start to show up. They're almost the same, they're so frequently the same one. One of them is perfectionism. The other one is overwhelm. The other one is this confusion of thinking you have to do everything to have everything. What do you think is at the root? Maybe we can pick them off one at a time, but in your experience what do you think is at the root of a lot of those recurring patterns we see in particular with women?

Melanie Benson:I love this. Patterns are a direct link to beliefs. Whenever someone has a pattern that's no serving them. I do a lot of mindset work with clients because I find that our mindset is influencing every decision we make or don't make. It influences the way we see opportunity or we don't. It influences every action we take or don't take. There's a lot of people walking around feeling like their business isn't working and it's simply because their mindset is not on the same frequency as the goal they've set for themselves.

I always have to look at procrastination, or perfectionism, or comparison itis, right? Another big one for a lot of us. [crosstalk [spp-timestamp time="00:15:44"]

Melinda Wittstock:Oh it is. Oh my goodness, yes. [crosstalk [spp-timestamp time="00:15:44"]

Melanie Benson:Like I'm not where I think I'm supposed to be, or I'm not as far along as that person but I work just as hard, right? We have to look at what's the belief that's driving that pattern that's ineffective. It's not getting you to the goal. Overwhelm is a pattern. It is a state of mind that you take on way too much or you're putting too many shoulds on yourself and you can't keep up.

For instance, perfectionism, I believe the root of perfectionism is fear. I am not enough. There's a fear that I'm not enough, I'm not capable, I'm not going to get this figured out. They get trapped in this I've got to get this right or else I'm not going to get the results. I'm not going to make the money, or I can't afford for this not to work, right? How many times have we seen that. I've spent all this money on this mentoring program, or to do this marketing thing or put this launch out and if it doesn't work I'm over. There's this perfectionism that stalls you and paralyzes you.

When really the belief is there's not enough.

Melinda Wittstock:It's a scarcity mindset. One of the things I'm doing right now in the world is a retreat to bring together top female entrepreneurs to really talk about this. How to get rid of these beliefs. No matter how many zeros you put on it, you can still be in that …

Sorry, my dog is barking. Auggie, come here, sweetie. Auggie.

No matter how many zeros that we put on something, if we don't solve the underlying cause we can just make the problem bigger. One of the things that I'm doing is bringing together a bunch of women for a retreat where we're going to be talking about abundance and how to manifest abundance in all areas of our lives. Finally lay this scarcity thing to rest because it's what keeps us playing too small, I think.

What do you think?

Melanie Benson:Well, I think scarcity, and it's wrapped around fear. It's this integrated belief system that there's not enough out there, there's not enough available to me and so people are making decisions on how do I not lose instead of how do I win. If you start right now, which by the way, I love the idea of bringing together entrepreneurs around this conversation because the fastest way to break free of it is to surround yourself with people who think better than you. Who have proven that the way they think is actually getting results that you're coveting, right?

If I want to break free of a fear that I'm having I'm going to surround myself with people that do that thing easily, effortlessly and thrive in that area. We have to start recoding the way our thoughts work so that we can think the thoughts that move us vibrationally to a result that we want. Melinda, one of my first big breakthroughs, very early in my career: I've been coaching and mentoring now for almost 20 years. My first couple of years I was broke all the time. I was hanging out with broke people so it was no surprise, right? I loved them. They were great people but they didn't know how to make money.

I very intentionally started investing and going to events working with mentors. Learning how to train my mind to think the way a successful business owner would think. About the time I really got intentional about that, I was making $1,000 a month. When I started doing this work and I trained my brain to think differently, nine months later I had broken six figures for the first time and I kept doubling that every year after that.

Melinda Wittstock:Isn't that amazing? It is the people we surround ourselves with. Sometimes even really well meaning people, like they can be our loved ones and family, they can keep us in fear because they're projecting their own stuff on us and they mean well …

Melanie Benson:But they're not us.

Melinda Wittstock:Exactly. That energy goes in and we're so empathetic as women we can kind of take it on as our own. I just, I love the idea of how can we get out of all these patterns. The “comparisonitis, the perfectionism, the isolation and all of these things and really live lives where success doesn't have to be a trade off. It doesn't have to come at the price of guilt or what not. I think sometimes women don't fear failure so much as they fear success.

Melanie Benson:Right? Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:If I really, really go for it and I really put myself out there and I do all those videos and I really go big, will my man still love me? Will I attract a man? What about my girlfriends, right? It can really hold us back. I think it's subconscious, though.

Melanie Benson:It is very subconscious. It's one of the three hidden profit barriers that people have holding them back. It's called conflict. It's basically two parts of us are at war. There's a part of us that wants to have more success and we see all the freedom that could come with that and the financial gain. That sounds exciting. Then, there's this fear that we would have to give up something important. We might lose something important to us especially if you've been burned before.

This internal conflict acts like a limiter and it keeps you from being willing to do the things that would actually work. You'll talk yourself out of doing that thing that everybody says you should do that. Part of you knows like ah, there would be so much joy, this would be so good. But you don't, because deep down inside the fear of losing your freedom, your mate, your identity, your love from somebody because they're judging you, right? Whatever that is is greater than the idea of being successful.

Melinda Wittstock:You know, I first noticed this because originally when I was marketing the retreat I was saying, “Hey, everybody. We can all play bigger.” I would notice imperceptibly, just for a split second the look of dread in the eyes of the women. I'm like wait a minute what's that? I was so blown away by it. I was like gosh, huh. What's going on there with those words? It took me a while on lots of conversations to figure out that yeah, it was that deep fear. Also, I think coupled with oh wow, I'm doing it all right now. I'm already doing so much that to play bigger would have me have to do more. Of course that's not the case, right? If you're really doubling down. [crosstalk [spp-timestamp time="00:22:29"]

Melanie Benson:That's the paradigm.

Melinda Wittstock:Exactly, that's the thing. [crosstalk [spp-timestamp time="00:22:30"]

Melanie Benson:That's the paradigm.

Melinda Wittstock:Shifting from the you can have it all without having to do it all. What does that take? How do you coach all your clients to get out of the mentality of doers and into owners where they see themselves as an asset?

Melanie Benson:Mm-hmm (affirmative), wow what a great question. I think there's a couple of pieces of this. One, I think there has to be a decision. The decision comes with the understanding that it could be different. If you can break and shatter that paradigm of you have to work harder to achieve more. It's like no, you actually have to leverage, you have to scale, you have to use different muscles. It kind of ties into this idea that you can't get to the next level the way you got to this level.

If we shatter that myth and then say, “Okay, so I'm willing to play the game called how do I scale to the million plus level and not work anymore hours?” Then your mind starts to gather new possibility. You start to meet people who've done it. You start to attract mentors who can guide you in this. You start to see the book on the book shelf that will open your mind to something and a new way to do it. I think there's maybe two pieces. There's got to be the decision, because without the decision you're still searching for answers to the wrong question. The second thing you have to do is you have to be willing to leverage. That looks differently depending on what you're building and who you are. Leverage basically means you look for ways to do something once and then it's going to get out there exponentially from that one movement. That might mean you give up the one-to-one coaching model, or your service business isn't dependent on you anymore.

It's like all right, so how do I make money if I'm not working in the business today? It might be how do I have multiple businesses? That means I've got to release being the control freak and the micromanager that has to touch every single thing? I can't be the bottleneck anymore. I've got to hire people to run those businesses.

Melinda Wittstock:Yeah, you can't be worried about fixing the broken link, you know? Or, doing your Quick book entries, you know? All those things. I think there's a really interesting thing to look at. The book The Big Leap by Gay Hendrix is really great for this. This idea of there's a zone of genius where we're in where only we can do it. It's unique to us. You think about what are those things that only we can do. Then there's also this, the really dangerous one is the zone of excellence where we're really good at something, but there are also other people that are really good at that.

Then of course there's the zone of competence. We can do it but it doesn't make our heart sing. Then there's the zone of incompetence and we all have stuff in all those four boxes. Trying to move everything, even the zone of excellence, out to somebody else is the most important thing but it's hard to let go. What do you say to a business owner who says oh yeah, I totally understand that. I get that. I just don't have the money. I don't have the money to hire anybody yet. How do you get them over that hurdle. That is a really, really big one for most people. [crosstalk [spp-timestamp time="00:25:46"]

Melanie Benson:Yeah, it is. Okay, well again this comes back to fear. I don't have enough money is a fear, right? We have to look at, first of all, we can get really practical with this and say well, okay. You don't have the money right now in your bank account, but what would it take to invest a certain amount of money to get where you want to go?  It's literally about asking your brain better questions. Instead of I don't have the money, it's what would have to happen for this investment today to pay off in the next three to six months?

You might look at all right, if I reinvest 10 hours a week in money producing activities, could I invest today someone to do five or six hours of work for me, or 10 hours of work for me so I can exponentially grow the freedom time I have. You have to look strategically rather than from a place of fear. One thing, Melinda, I've learned about fear. Fear often times disguises itself as logic.

Melinda Wittstock:Yes.

Melanie Benson:Your logic brain goes and searches for the logical approach. Oh, I don't have the money in my bank account. I don't see how to hire somebody. Nobody is going to be able to do what I do. That's all logical and practical. You want to achieve big things you've never done before? You want to play a bolder game? You've got to be willing to let go and invest today to get where you want to go tomorrow. I'm not saying go upside down and put yourself in such a financial leverage place that you're in danger, I'm saying be strategic. Invest in growth and then work the plan.

Melinda Wittstock:Absolutely. I find even with my podcast now when I first started this podcast yeah, I was proving it out so I was doing a lot of it myself. As soon as I could, I started to automate all my systems. Guests automatically appear on my calendar. All that stuff is done. Then gradually, you know, I got a VA helping me with the pre production, the post production. Then of course, taking every single bit of content and repurposing it six ways from Sunday so all I do now is I show up and I have these amazing conversations, which I love. I always learn things from. It's amazing. It's so much fun. I'm doing what I love to do but all the rest somebody else could do and probably enjoy more than I'm doing. That's just an example, I guess.

Melanie Benson:Yeah. I have a little mantra around it. Maybe it would help the listeners really get in the right mindset. I used to teach people, and I still do to some degree, on how to build dream teams. It came out of teaching that for about 10 years. It's the idea that higher people that can do it better, faster or cheaper than you. Notice I didn't say and. [crosstalk [spp-timestamp time="00:28:40"]

Melinda Wittstock:Right, better faster or cheaper, yeah. [crosstalk [spp-timestamp time="00:28:42"]

Melanie Benson:Right? You've got to be willing to let go to grow.

Melinda Wittstock:Yeah, there's always somebody. I read somewhere, and I wish I could remember the source of this. Businesses who made a higher, even if it was a vendor or a VA or something in the first six months not only survived, but actually prospered. If you can get from that start up stick floor to that first hire and take that leap it makes all the difference in the world.

I'm going to pivot slightly and just ask you about what you were like as a kid. I'm curious about this. Were you always entrepreneurial? Did you always kind of know like okay, one day I'm going to have this business and I'm going to be helping other people. Did you have the lemonade stand? What was your study when you were a kid?

Melanie Benson:Oh my God, I love this. This is hilarious. My parents were entrepreneurial. We had a family business. We were in the bee industry in Arizona, very early on, so I kind of think that was in my DNA a little bit. I grew up, it's like if I wanted something I just went and made it happen. I was super bossy. I'll just own that. Bossy kid in the neighborhood organizing all the kids to do whatever I wanted. I used to run the Jerry Louis telethon so that I could make money and get on TV. Of course, I had absolutely no influence desires whatsoever, right?

Yeah, that was me. I was organizing bake sales. I was a leader, really. More than an entrepreneur I was the leader. I was always leading my neighborhood kids into some kind of shenanigan or event that I wanted to have. Event producer.

Melinda Wittstock:This is so interesting. Do you think you just picked that up from just watching your parents, just watching what they were doing? Is it DNA or learned?

Melanie Benson:I don't know where it came from. I think it was DNA because my dad was a play it safe guy and my mom was a stay at home mom. I think there was something in my DNA of kind of that entrepreneur spirit that my grandparents had and having that freedom where we kind of went out and served the bee hives all over the place. There was just something in that, I think, that sparked this desire I was very much make a difference driven at a early age.

I lost all of that along the way. I got indoctrinated into the play it safe model. My dad was like go get your degree. Go get a corporate job. My very first job out of college was a sales job for a personal development goal setting company. I didn't know how to sell so I was failing at it so I played it safe again and I went and got a corporate job, which was great. It taught me so much and it also taught me what I didn't want. I felt like I was trapped in a world that wasn't my world but it created a really strong foundation. All along the way I had these little entrepreneurial leader oriented things that would pop for me. It just took me a long time to get to the place where I had the courage to pursue it.

Melinda Wittstock:I think we're twins. When I was a kid I did the same thing. I just had this natural DNA. I went out, I was almost six years old, I went out with my black lab one day and just knocked on all these doors and demanded prepayment for my “show.”

Melanie Benson:Oh my God! I love that.

Melinda Wittstock:I made like a hundred dollars, so I'm kind of ancient so this is a lot of money. They all paid. I think my black lab just wouldn't leave I think until I got the money. He was my enforcer. All these people showed up. I remember going home and saying to my dad, “Where can we get 100 chairs?” Seriously, I was like this precocious brat, but it was awesome and it felt so natural to me. I didn't really understand that it didn't have, I just couldn't see why it wasn't valuable because I was doing something that was in my unique zone what I love to do. I forgot my value along the way, as well.

I think we all do and then we have to relearn it. That's why I love talking about kind of just for everybody to remember what they were doing as a child before they got indoctrinated because that's a really good clue into your purpose.

Melanie Benson:Well, you know, just to go a little deeper with how powerful this is when I was really lost and I didn't know what I wanted to be or what my career path could be and I was just unhappy I went back to what did I do as a kid that was natural. It was one of my clue gathering processes and remembering all the times that I used to go out and enroll the neighborhood kids and my grandmother and about 10 other people to put on these bake sales where I could make money, right? It wasn't like, it wasn't profit sharing, it was all for my own goals.

I realized that those were the clues that were going to shape my destiny and me being more aligned with my next career path.

Melinda Wittstock:That's amazing. Now, here you are. You're helping people amplify their influence. I want to go back to that a little bit. You were talking about how to do that authentically and also just how can women and men, we have some men who listen to this podcast, as well, which is awesome. When you're feeling invisible or feeling overwhelmed when you look at Instagram and you look at people who have like tens of thousands of followers and you're just beginning. It doesn't really feel like a natural thing to you but you know you have to do it. Or, at least have that social presence and there's so much content to create and all that kind of stuff. Where do you start? What do you do?

Melanie Benson:Yeah, I just got overwhelmed even listening to all that, right?

Melinda Wittstock:Right, that's the thing. You do because you go through this process in your head and I know, I've been there. It's like oh gosh, I've got to really step up my game. I'm really nowhere on YouTube right now. How could a podcast not be also crushing it on YouTube? I've got to do that. Oh, Instagram. I'm way behind on that, too. Facebook is going okay, but I should be doing LinkedIn. Right? It's all that. It's like oh my God.

Melanie Benson:It never ends, it never ends. There's a couple of layers here. I think one if we just go back to how to, first of all you have to stop looking at what other people are doing from a place of I'm not enough. You have to look at what other people are doing from a place of inspiration. What lights you up? What do you want to lean into? It's information, it's not a measuring tool.

The idea of influence comes back to if we can really own, I call it owning your bold. How do you own your own bold influence? I actually do a whole online challenge around this once a year because it's so powerful. To recognize that if we can own our own bold influence then we can start to share with others and it comes from a place of confidence. One thing you can do is look at what is … Assuming you're a service-based business owner, let's take that for a minute. What is the problem you most naturally solve for people? What do people come to you and you would do it all day long and not even get paid for it, right? What is the thing that you effortlessly do and you don't even realize you're doing something other people can't do? This is where your influence can be born from.

There's this little trifecta I use with my clients to help them kind of dig a little bit deeper. The simple version of it is you solve a problem, there are people on this planet, there's a group of them who are hungrily searching for the answer to this problem they have. Then there's the, all right, so what do you want to do? If you can find the trifecta answer to that, what do you want to do? What's the problem you love solving and what are they going to pay money to solve? Then, that becomes one of your pillars of influence. Then, we have to figure out how do you amplify it.

Amplifying it is, there's all these different amplifying strategies. Podcasts would be one of them, doing videos, having a TV show, having a radio show. We have to find the thing that fits your personality and what are you going to do over and over and over again. Here's one and I know you've seen people do this. People start something because they see other people doing it. They get bored, they get restless, they're like okay, that's not working for me because they did three times and it didn't work, right? Then they give up on it before the magic has happened. Before the traction is there.

Melinda Wittstock:You see a lot of that in the podcast, now. The pod fade, right? It's just a lot more work than people bargain for. They just didn't really think about it. They hopped into it before really understanding that. It's great, I mean I love it. I can't tell you how many benefits have come from podcasting and I'm sure that's true for you, too.

By the way, I'm so excited that we're both going to be icons of influence at the new media summit coming up in September. That's going to be really cool.

Melanie Benson:I love it, love it, love it.

Melinda Wittstock:It's interesting, because if you take podcasting for a moment, it feels to me like it's where blogging was say in 2002. You know what I mean? There are only, I mean, I don't know, there are 700,000 podcasts, there are 500 million blogs. It's a great place to stand out if we take that. What does it take for people to really do that? And finding out whether it's the right thing for you, whether you should be doing that as opposed to YouTube or focusing on your Facebook or whatever you should be doing to really own your own bold. I love that. Own your own bold.

Melanie Benson:Own your bold, is what I call it, yeah. What I think is, again, you can throw darts at the wall and see what sticks if you're willing to take the risk financially, right? If you're willing to put some stuff out there and see what really lands, that's one way. Another way is to kind of dig a little bit deeper and say where are my ideal clients? Where are they out there gathering information? They're naturally going to these things or turning to these things for wisdom and inspiration. What lights my fire?

One of the reasons I do a podcast is because I love collaborating with other amazing influencers and sharing their wisdom. I love the community of podcasting. Podcasting has actually been around a long time. It's been around like over 10 years, but it hit a sense of momentum about six, seven years ago when iTunes got in the game and made it easy to listen to podcasts. We're kind of like learning what's at the tipping point? What's starting to get this traction? What's popular? Where are people going to be looking naturally?

Then, you can kind of lean into the thing that's exciting for you rather than doing something like well, I got to do this. Who wants to keep putting energy into that, right? You're going to get bored with it.

Melinda Wittstock:That's for sure. There are so many, you know, I know this phrase is used a lot in podcasting, so many value bombs here. An overused phrase, but it popped into my mind. I can see you obviously offer so much value to all your clients. Who is your ideal client, Melanie? Who do you want to work with and how can people find you and work with you?

Melanie Benson:Thank you. I mean, I love people who have a service and maybe even they're building a business around this expertise and this wisdom that you have a lot of soul driven passion for and they're wanting to have a greater impact. There's two stages people come to me. They haven't quite figured out how to put it all together so that it's actually making money. I help them structure how their expert based business, or their service based business is going to be able to grow beyond just them doing it all.

Then, some people come to me that are at a little bit higher level. They're in the seven figures already and they're just spinning. Their business is so big and so overwhelming they can't quite figure out how to have them anymore. We have to restructure it so it can scale more effectively. Really, the best place to start with me, I mean, I'm all over social media and you can always find me at my melaniebenson.com site. I have this quiz that I find is super insightful no matter what stage of business you're at and it's called your hidden profit drains.

In the quiz, what I do is ask you a series of questions to help you really understand what's holding you back from making that next leap? From being able to go into that next big bold goal you have. Then, you'll get your quiz results and once I send you your quiz results I'll also send you a copy of my book Rewired for Wealth, which will really help you unpack a lot of the mindset of success. You can get that at melaniebenson.com/wings. We set up a special link just for your listeners, Melinda to make it easy to find.

Melinda Wittstock:Ah, thank you so much for that. That's fantastic. I encourage everybody to take Melanie up on her offer and follow her on Instagram and everywhere else. Listen to her podcast and all that. We'll have all that in the show notes.

Melanie, I just want to thank you for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Melanie Benson:Thank you for having me. It's been a joy flying with you.

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Listen to learn the secrets, strategies, practical tips and epiphanies of women entrepreneurs who’ve “been there, built that” so you too can manifest the confidence, capital and connections to soar to success!
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