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Challenge with Melissa Vela-Williamson · Lean Out Podcast

• 0:00
  Dawn: Welcome to the lean out podcast.
• 0:03
  Dawn: I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:04
  Dawn: Don baker.
• 0:05
  Dawn: Are you looking for a new approach to finding work-life balance?
• 0:09
  Dawn: You've come to the right place.
• 0:11
  Dawn: Listen, as I interview amazing women professionals, who've taken the steps to lean out.
• 0:16
  Dawn: And find balance on their own terms.
• 0:19
  Hello?
• 0:19
  Hello.
• 0:20
  Thanks for being here.
• 0:21
  Today, I'm talking with Melissa Vela, Williamson.
• 0:25
  Melissa is an internationally recognized public relations, strategist, author, a national columnist, and a podcast host.
• 0:34
  She is accredited in PR certified in diversity, equity and inclusion, and she uses PR for social good through her boutique firm.
• 0:43
  And VW communications.
• 0:45
  Her website is Three sixty.com and I will have more resources in the show notes for how to get in touch with her.
• 0:54
  I learned so much talking with Melissa about being a PR pro and what it's like.
• 0:59
  I appreciating the value of discipline, recognizing the hard things that you've done that may not even seem relevant to your lean out journey or whatever issues you're currently facing.
• 1:10
  And hint to all of you.
• 1:12
  Everything that you do.
• 1:14
  That is hard and is challenging will help you gain confidence.
• 1:18
  I hope you enjoy this conversation with Melissa fella, Williamson.
• 1:24
  MVW-Dawn: Melissa, welcome to the show.
• 1:27
  MVW-Melissa: Hi, Dr.
• 1:27
  MVW-Melissa: Dawn.
• 1:27
  MVW-Melissa: I'm excited to be here with you.
• 1:29
  MVW-Melissa: And thanks for having me on the show, Dawn.
• 1:31
  MVW-Melissa: I work in public relations and a lot of people may think they know what PR is.
• 1:37
  MVW-Melissa: And a lot of the work that I do now after being in the field for 20 years is really educating aspiring students.
• 1:44
  MVW-Melissa: Journalists who transition into the field as well as just people in the public of what PR really is and public relations is all about building relationships between organizations and the public's or audiences that they really depend upon.
• 2:00
  MVW-Melissa: This relationship should be two ways.
• 2:02
  MVW-Melissa: It should be win win, uh, and positive.
• 2:04
  MVW-Melissa: And so that's what I focus on in my work.
• 2:07
  MVW-Melissa: And I've been in the field for 20 years.
• 2:09
  MVW-Melissa: And I was first really attracted to it because it felt like work that mattered.
• 2:13
  MVW-Melissa: It felt like elements of marketing, elements of creative writing, which had been my background as a student, and photography, event planning, Getting to know people getting out and about all of that was mixing together in a wonderful way through this PR discipline lens, which has many, many facets and keeps changing over time, how we practice PR now in 2023 is much different than in some ways than how we did it 20 years ago.
• 2:42
  MVW-Melissa: Um, and some of it has to do with tools, right?
• 2:44
  MVW-Melissa: The difference between faxing a press release and now being so dependent on email, but also texting with journalists, messaging, of course, AI is infiltrated.
• 2:54
  MVW-Melissa: Everyone's work in some way.
• 2:56
  MVW-Melissa: And so our profession tends to be quite demanding in public relations.
• 3:02
  MVW-Melissa: One aspect of that work that makes it very different than marketing or advertising or other parts of communication is that we are really called upon to be true guides and counselors for clients and our clients could be.
• 3:16
  MVW-Melissa: In a traditional work setting, our, you know, constituents, it could be our supervisors, right?
• 3:22
  MVW-Melissa: We talk about in a lot of workplaces managing up.
• 3:25
  MVW-Melissa: Well, if you're a PR pro like me, who, I don't know why this kept happening to me, but I tended to be the only one that did public relations in my teams or in my workplaces.
• 3:37
  MVW-Melissa: Then sometimes you really feel a little bit more like Jiminy Cricket and how he was the conscience of Pinocchio.
• 3:44
  MVW-Melissa: In Disney's Pinocchio film, and we have to go around and really understand the ethics, understand integrity, make sure that our organizations, our brands, our workplaces are being authentic, and whatever they say that they believe in, and in that they're doing.
• 4:00
  MVW-Melissa: Thank you.
• 4:00
  MVW-Melissa: Vision is their mission is that they're actually living those components.
• 4:03
  MVW-Melissa: So the work changes a lot.
• 4:05
  MVW-Melissa: We're the ones who are called in when there's a crisis and we need to communicate about that crisis.
• 4:10
  MVW-Melissa: And so we're often in some ways on the front lines.
• 4:14
  MVW-Melissa: And I know in your field, when it comes to, uh, medicine, doctors, medical practice, PR professionals would be the first one that they would call when they want to get out an important message to the community.
• 4:25
  MVW-Dawn: Thank you so much for describing what a public relations professional does, because I don't know a lot about that profession.
• 4:35
  MVW-Dawn: I know a lot of listeners are probably in that same boat.
• 4:39
  So tell us a little bit about your business now
• 4:42
  MVW-Melissa: I started my own business in 2015.
• 4:45
  MVW-Melissa: My business is called MVW communications.
• 4:48
  MVW-Melissa: It's a boutique public relations firm.
• 4:50
  MVW-Melissa: And we really try to use public relations for social good by working with clients in the education sector, the nonprofit sector, or for profits who really want to have some kind of positive impact.
• 5:02
  MVW-Melissa: in that role, I truly am a counselor and advisor as a consultant.
• 5:07
  MVW-Melissa: I feel like I'm heard a little bit better than when I was an employee, although most of my career had been in that traditional employee game.
• 5:15
  MVW-Melissa: I really could understand that difference of separation and having that outside point of view.
• 5:20
  MVW-Melissa: That just allowed me to say things that are a little bit harder to talk about as an employee, but what I'm doing, that's a little bit differently than my peers in the business is that I started the business because of a life catalyst.
• 5:33
  MVW-Melissa: A lot of us have these little crucible moments, right?
• 5:35
  MVW-Melissa: These hinge points where things need to change.
• 5:38
  MVW-Melissa: And if we're smart about it, we move with that change instead of just ignoring it.
• 5:43
  MVW-Melissa: And in 2015, I had a daughter who was finishing up kindergarten that spring of 2015.
• 5:50
  MVW-Melissa: And I had my son who had been born in 2014.
• 5:53
  MVW-Melissa: So he was coming up on his one year birthday and as someone who cared about the profession and how I did professionally, I was an account supervisor at a very large PR firm.
• 6:03
  MVW-Melissa: I was having a great experience with that firm.
• 6:05
  MVW-Melissa: They treated me very well.
• 6:06
  MVW-Melissa: But the work is demanding.
• 6:08
  MVW-Melissa: So it wasn't the kind of profession where it's five o'clock, you know, you turn off the computer and you walk out, something could be happening, right?
• 6:15
  MVW-Melissa: The media could be calling and asking to interview your client and that's in the best of circumstances or some kind of tragedy or issue had popped up and you're there to help navigate that circumstance.
• 6:28
  MVW-Melissa: So it wasn't a, an easy way to navigate being a working mom.
• 6:32
  MVW-Melissa: Um, and.
• 6:33
  MVW-Melissa: When I was doing that work, my kids were going to a downtown school with me.
• 6:38
  MVW-Melissa: So I'm based here in San Antonio.
• 6:40
  MVW-Melissa: We are very sprawled out as a city, which is wonderful.
• 6:43
  MVW-Melissa: There's a lot of different types of places to live, but getting to work.
• 6:48
  MVW-Melissa: And a lot of the jobs being downtown, right?
• 6:51
  MVW-Melissa: So going from the suburbs into a more urban area can be complex and trying to navigate getting to everywhere on time and whatnot was really tricky as an employee.
• 7:03
  MVW-Melissa: And as it is for most people, but as a mom who had worked really hard to have her kids, I had dealt with infertility struggles, getting pregnant with my daughter.
• 7:13
  MVW-Melissa: And so it took us two and a half years to get pregnant.
• 7:16
  MVW-Melissa: And by the time I did, you know, I really wanted to be involved in her life.
• 7:20
  MVW-Melissa: And so I was, I was trying to do that the best I could.
• 7:21
  MVW-Melissa: So I had her at a private parochial school downtown near where I worked.
• 7:27
  MVW-Melissa: I was about 10 minutes away.
• 7:28
  MVW-Melissa: And then by the time I had my son, we had had a little more infertility challenges and actually Carriage between the two kids.
• 7:36
  MVW-Melissa: So he was my rainbow baby and I really wanted to honor how hard it had been to bring these children to the world.
• 7:42
  MVW-Melissa: I want to be a great mom and a great employee and a great PR pro.
• 7:46
  MVW-Melissa: So I'm trying to balance that all as we say.
• 7:49
  MVW-Melissa: Um, but it was really, really tough and challenging.
• 7:52
  MVW-Melissa: And so at that.
• 7:54
  MVW-Melissa: Point of my life in 2015, I could also feel a different calling or a pool.
• 8:00
  MVW-Melissa: Of course I ignored that.
• 8:01
  MVW-Melissa: Right.
• 8:01
  MVW-Melissa: I gotta be pragmatic and practical, but I was also noticing that my children's school that they were at, it was a church based daycare and learning center and, private school, and they didn't seem to be doing well financially.
• 8:13
  MVW-Melissa: So just to wrap it up pretty quickly for you, I could.
• 8:19
  MVW-Melissa: Um, school is going to be around through the next year.
• 8:21
  MVW-Melissa: And I didn't want my daughter to be in a first grade experience that maybe the school would close on her.
• 8:27
  MVW-Melissa: And that's in fact, Don, exactly what happened that, um, the school did end up closing quite suddenly, in the fall semester of that year, but luckily I'd had that vision and understanding of patterns and saying, you know, I think that something might be happening here financially, let's go ahead and proactively Runnismos Move the kids to a different school and the best schools we could find were closer to our home and closer to our home was about 30 minutes away on a great day, commute time.
• 8:56
  MVW-Melissa: So to be able to balance it out a little bit better so that I wasn't always running with my hair on fire, one direction or another, I had told my employer at the time.
• 9:07
  MVW-Melissa: Look by the fall of 2015, I'm going to need to move my kids to a school and daycare that's closer to my home.
• 9:15
  MVW-Melissa: I have a home office.
• 9:17
  MVW-Melissa: What do you think about my continuing my employment here?
• 9:20
  MVW-Melissa: I'm happy, but I would need to work out of my home office.
• 9:25
  MVW-Melissa: And at the time in 2015, that just was counterculture.
• 9:28
  MVW-Melissa: It just was not happening a lot where you could be in a remote employee and then the agency world and life, it's very fast paced and in PR, of course, we know something could happen any moment, but I felt very confident I could do that remotely.
• 9:41
  MVW-Melissa: I had seen independent PR practitioners or solo PR pros, as they call themselves, or I'd seen freelancers coming in.
• 9:49
  MVW-Melissa: In and out of agency life.
• 9:50
  MVW-Melissa: So I, I couldn't understand why maybe I couldn't give it a shot.
• 9:54
  MVW-Melissa: And then of course, come into the office for big meetings, client events, whatnot, but the employer just was not comfortable with it.
• 10:02
  MVW-Melissa: And I knew that I needed to move with this change.
• 10:05
  MVW-Melissa: I knew that I was going to be a terrible employee.
• 10:08
  MVW-Melissa: If I had my kids at the school near my home, and then I was struggling to try to get to work on time.
• 10:13
  MVW-Melissa: And then trying to get back to them after the day ended because we just, Didn't quite close at five.
• 10:19
  MVW-Melissa: I mean, you could, you could run out the door to try to get to the schools on the other side of town on time, but that's just not look well upon, especially as a leader in the industry.
• 10:29
  MVW-Melissa: So I made the decision.
• 10:31
  MVW-Melissa: I wrote out a business, a small little business plan and kind of a pitch to my employer and said, look, I'm either going to be a terrible employee and run out the door, you know, and probably come in late, but.
• 10:42
  MVW-Melissa: At least run out the door every day at five, or I can be a wonderful contractor and we can transition to where I work out of my home office, but I continue working with you all.
• 10:51
  MVW-Melissa: And because I didn't have a problem with my employer, it was just location based.
• 10:56
  MVW-Melissa: And I was trying to control some aspect of a very challenging career and industry that I do love.
• 11:04
  MVW-Melissa: I wanted to control one factor of it, the remote aspect, the transportation and commute aspect.
• 11:10
  MVW-Melissa: So, um, my employer said, you know what, we would love to continue working with you.
• 11:15
  MVW-Melissa: Let's have you be a contractor.
• 11:17
  MVW-Melissa: And that's what inspired me to start NVW communications was that, well, I need to work out of my home office.
• 11:23
  MVW-Melissa: So I'm.
• 11:24
  MVW-Melissa: Better equipped to help and integrate my life and help and get my kids to school in a way that's not frantic and then also be available for their activities, but then also be able to pick them up at a decent time because I was already the last mom and I was near them when I was downtown.
• 11:42
  MVW-Melissa: So I'm doing it a little bit differently in that NVW Communications is a non employer business.
• 11:48
  MVW-Melissa: Guess I'm the only employee, right?
• 11:51
  MVW-Melissa: But everyone I work with, my team can vary anywhere from five to 15 people, depending on what accounts we're working on.
• 11:58
  MVW-Melissa: We come together as contractors.
• 12:00
  MVW-Melissa: We power together.
• 12:02
  MVW-Melissa: I say is like Avengers that you're great at this.
• 12:04
  MVW-Melissa: I'm great at that.
• 12:05
  MVW-Melissa: We need the skillset for this project or campaign.
• 12:08
  MVW-Melissa: And so we come together and I look for.
• 12:11
  MVW-Melissa: Pros that are dependable can work, you know, in a self driven manner who want to do great work without a lot of red tape and, um, I make the business this way so that the overhead is as lean as it can be.
• 12:24
  MVW-Melissa: And I find it's a lot easier to start a business in this model.
• 12:28
  MVW-Melissa: And so I'm happy to share it.
• 12:31
  MVW-Dawn: I can really resonate with a lot of the aspects of your story.
• 12:35
  MVW-Dawn: And when I heard you in a conversation on your own podcast with another PR professional, you mentioned that, You had started your own business to have location freedom and that is the way that you put it.
• 12:46
  MVW-Dawn: And I really was like, Oh, yeah, we've got to talk about that.
• 12:50
  MVW-Dawn: And you brought it up in this explanation, which is great, but it's so interesting because it's different than.
• 12:57
  MVW-Dawn: The location freedom that I craved that I discussed in my book and that I talk about with my coaching clients and with other professionals when I speak, which is a freedom to be able to travel.
• 13:10
  MVW-Dawn: But yours was really more of this micro level freedom to be able to move within your actual city.
• 13:16
  MVW-Dawn: And that is very real for a lot of people who live in a big city.
• 13:20
  MVW-Dawn: I had a coaching client one time who was commuting one hour To work in the New York City area and two hours home after a 12 hour day.
• 13:31
  MVW-Dawn: And I said to her, this is completely not sustainable and she knew it.
• 13:36
  MVW-Dawn: And then you add on top of that, the stress of needing to be able to pick up your children at a certain time.
• 13:42
  MVW-Dawn: I think a lot of.
• 13:44
  MVW-Dawn: A lot of moms who are listening to this can resonate with that feeling that sinking feeling when you're the last parent to pick up your child and your child is the only one at the daycare at 6pm when they're about to close the doors.
• 14:01
  MVW-Melissa: And especially those of us who really, you know, I honor every type of parent, but those of us who really had to fight to have these moments, it just feels so dissonant to, to be that parent.
• 14:16
  MVW-Melissa: And, and I, I always felt guilty and, you know, when I'm embracing Don that I think as women, we're just kind of wired in a special way to have that.
• 14:25
  MVW-Melissa: I tell new moms, there's a red light that comes on and starts blinking once that baby's born you can't turn it off, right?
• 14:33
  MVW-Melissa: It's that little, you're monitoring your alert.
• 14:36
  MVW-Melissa: You're aware of my child's home.
• 14:39
  MVW-Melissa: My child's not home.
• 14:40
  MVW-Melissa: My child's in, you know, has this test today and you can't quite turn it off, but I just wanted to say, can I shape?
• 14:47
  MVW-Melissa: Certain aspects of my life that just make it a little less tough that just remove some friction because my industry is already hard, but a lot of the work we do is on the computer or on the phone that can move with me.
• 15:03
  MVW-Melissa: And since I've started the business, I've done the best work of my career.
• 15:07
  MVW-Melissa: I've won the most awards in my career and the most soul satisfying campaigns because that autonomy to Focus in on what matters with the work and get rid of what is just waste has really, really helped.
• 15:23
  MVW-Dawn: yeah.
• 15:24
  MVW-Dawn: And you talked a lot about the idea of a very low overhead model.
• 15:28
  MVW-Dawn: My husband also is a very early adopter of this type of work.
• 15:33
  MVW-Dawn: He's an attorney in intellectual property and left big firms in order to Be like you where he's a solopreneur who works with other contracted attorneys when he needs someone of a different specialty and forms teams to solve problems.
• 15:50
  MVW-Dawn: And that's basically what you're doing.
• 15:52
  MVW-Dawn: I'm wondering if during the initial periods there was some financial uncertainty and how did you weather that?
• 16:01
  MVW-Melissa: Yeah, well, you know, let's be honest.
• 16:03
  MVW-Melissa: I think there's probably always financial uncertainty for most of us.
• 16:08
  MVW-Melissa: At least here in the U.
• 16:09
  MVW-Melissa: S.
• 16:09
  MVW-Melissa: That's what the numbers say, right?
• 16:10
  MVW-Melissa: I think one of the research stats that I've run into again and again is that most Americans can't stand an emergency that costs more than 400.
• 16:19
  MVW-Melissa: So, I am first generation in terms of getting that bachelor's degree in my family.
• 16:27
  MVW-Melissa: I'm one of five kids.
• 16:28
  MVW-Melissa: My mom was the first in our family to get any kind of degree after high school.
• 16:34
  MVW-Melissa: She got an associates in dental hygiene and that happened when I was in middle school.
• 16:38
  MVW-Melissa: So she really taught me about perseverance and moving through and doing hard things.
• 16:45
  MVW-Melissa: And going after that long game approach.
• 16:48
  MVW-Melissa: And so what I really think about and thought about when I was going to start the business was.
• 16:55
  MVW-Melissa: One thing I had been always able to bet on was myself.
• 16:58
  MVW-Melissa: I knew I would do the work.
• 17:00
  MVW-Melissa: I was always that kind of employee.
• 17:01
  MVW-Melissa: They called me, uh, you know, and this sounds terrible now, right?
• 17:05
  MVW-Melissa: But like the work horse or the race horse, people could not keep up with me.
• 17:09
  MVW-Melissa: I could do more than people.
• 17:10
  MVW-Melissa: I could juggle more than people.
• 17:11
  MVW-Melissa: I was super creative and the big ideas.
• 17:13
  MVW-Melissa: So I knew that I also hated dragging others along the way.
• 17:18
  MVW-Melissa: So I.
• 17:20
  MVW-Melissa: I knew I could better myself professionally.
• 17:22
  MVW-Melissa: I knew I would do the work but the part financially that was super helpful.
• 17:25
  MVW-Melissa: And I want to share with your listeners is that I was debt free, um, except for my house.
• 17:31
  MVW-Melissa: And that is very unusual.
• 17:33
  MVW-Melissa: And in even my family culture and dynamic, I had done the Dave Ramsey total money make over plan.
• 17:40
  MVW-Melissa: When I was younger, because I was the first to go to a four year university, and I went to a small private university because I was too intimidated to go to a large public.
• 17:52
  MVW-Melissa: That was a mistake financially because the loans that I had to get to sustain that every semester were incredible.
• 17:59
  MVW-Melissa: And so I ended up paying off with the help of my husband and his salary over like 82, 000 worth of debt doing the snowball.
• 18:08
  MVW-Melissa: Method, which is really simple and accessible, I think, to most people to figure out.
• 18:13
  MVW-Melissa: I'm by all means a words, person, not a numbers person, but I'm good with discipline.
• 18:20
  MVW-Melissa: I had been through a lot of hard things in my life.
• 18:23
  MVW-Melissa: Health wise, I had lost a hundred pounds while I was in college.
• 18:26
  MVW-Melissa: The good old fashioned, boring, hard way, which is eating better, learning how to eat right.
• 18:31
  MVW-Melissa: Learning how to kind of break through the scarcity mindset, which I think led to me being overweight where we didn't have a lot of food.
• 18:38
  MVW-Melissa: And then we did, but it was like low value nutritionally, high calorie nutritionally, and that had to break through a lot of different barriers.
• 18:47
  MVW-Melissa: So by the time I came To this point in 2015, where I thought, well, I should just go out on my own as a freelancer and see if I can make it that way.
• 18:56
  MVW-Melissa: I felt like it was pretty doable because I did some numbers and I said, Oh, I really only have to make this much per month to sustain our lifestyle.
• 19:06
  MVW-Melissa: I can make that.
• 19:07
  MVW-Melissa: Much per month.
• 19:09
  MVW-Melissa: And in fact, years before when I'd had my daughter in 2009, I had started my first business.
• 19:16
  MVW-Melissa: I didn't really think of it that way, but it was a photography business, which is professionally.
• 19:20
  MVW-Melissa: One of my first loves was photography, just not a sustainable career path for me, at least in my market.
• 19:27
  MVW-Melissa: But when I had my daughter Amelia in 2009, she was so beautiful.
• 19:32
  MVW-Melissa: And I, I look traditionally Latina.
• 19:34
  MVW-Melissa: I have brown hair, brown eyes.
• 19:36
  MVW-Melissa: And my daughter came out with light brown hair, super curly, like Shirley Temple and blue eyes for the first two years of her life.
• 19:44
  MVW-Melissa: And so I was going wild taking photos of this girl and I would take her to studios, which my first few jobs were all photography.
• 19:51
  MVW-Melissa: I did photos at the SeaWorld theme park in my area.
• 19:55
  MVW-Melissa: Um, animals and people coming through the front gate and rides.
• 19:58
  MVW-Melissa: And then I did, stints at JCPenney and Sears Portrait Studio, which those skills still serve me to this day on how to get people camera ready and set them up and sit them down nicely and whatnot.
• 20:10
  MVW-Melissa: But because of that background as part time jobs in college.
• 20:14
  MVW-Melissa: I was very frustrated that my daughter couldn't get photographed well by traditional studios.
• 20:19
  MVW-Melissa: So I picked up, the newest DSLR camera and took her photos and said, you know what?
• 20:24
  MVW-Melissa: I could do this for friends and family, and I can do this on top of my full time job, where I was at at the time.
• 20:30
  MVW-Melissa: I, I had a little more creative energy to give.
• 20:33
  MVW-Melissa: And so I made a little side business and photography was Melissa's sounding photography.
• 20:38
  MVW-Melissa: And I did beautiful baby photos and natural light photos and portraits and whatnot.
• 20:43
  MVW-Melissa: And it wasn't sustainable as a full time job like my public relations businesses, but it taught me the bones of how to actually form a business, get that DBA or doing business as name, um, how to put together a website, a little marketing plan for your own business.
• 21:00
  MVW-Melissa: It's very different when you're doing this work for yourself, although I do this for clients all the time, it feels very vulnerable.
• 21:07
  MVW-Melissa: And awkward to be promoting yourself for your own business, but I did learn that through my side photography business and I finished that and I closed that up because that was more hobby money, but it helped me connect with different people in a different way.
• 21:21
  MVW-Melissa: And now was the infrastructure of when I put together MVW communications.
• 21:26
  MVW-Melissa: I already knew how to walk that walk.
• 21:28
  MVW-Melissa: So I think that if you can get yourself ready financially and try to pay off as much debt as possible and like losing weight after you go through and race through that ribbon, you're not done.
• 21:39
  MVW-Melissa: You have to keep debt away.
• 21:40
  MVW-Melissa: You have to keep that old weight away and stay disciplined so that you are more agile in life.
• 21:46
  MVW-Melissa: And that's something that I'm continuously working on.
• 21:50
  MVW-Dawn: I love this answer so much.
• 21:52
  MVW-Dawn: There are so many things that you just said that are wonderful and have basis, the financial aspect of being debt free and living simply, and then also the discipline and that it's a constant practice your history is just so rich.
• 22:09
  MVW-Dawn: It's, it's really refreshing and interesting to hear all this stuff.
• 22:14
  MVW-Dawn: I love the whole moniker of doing hard things.
• 22:17
  MVW-Dawn: I have that as an entire chapter in my book.
• 22:20
  MVW-Dawn: And part of the doing hard things is that you practice in small ways.
• 22:26
  MVW-Dawn: One of the things that you just mentioned is the photography side business, where it was this small side thing.
• 22:33
  MVW-Dawn: It wasn't your your sole way of making money.
• 22:38
  MVW-Dawn: And so it didn't have that weight on it and it taught you so much.
• 22:42
  MVW-Dawn: So then when you did do the really hard thing of starting your own PR firm and going out from scratch, you actually had a little bit of a background and you had practiced some of the same techniques that you needed to employ.
• 22:56
  MVW-Dawn: So I love this multifaceted way that you handled periods of uncertainty.
• 23:00
  MVW-Dawn: It's wonderful.
• 23:02
  MVW-Melissa: Well, and I want to also.
• 23:05
  MVW-Melissa: Connect the dots a little bit and say, because I'm that the multifaceted techniques and my various in some ways complex backgrounds and the way I think about things, I'm also multi passionate as Marie Forleo would say, and that also brings its own uncertainty, because you have to control.
• 23:26
  MVW-Melissa: At certain points of your career, your aspirations.
• 23:29
  MVW-Melissa: I'm super curious.
• 23:32
  MVW-Melissa: I want to try everything.
• 23:34
  MVW-Melissa: I think that Shakira song and Zootopia really spoke to me like I want to try everything and I want to experiment and I love all the shiny.
• 23:43
  MVW-Melissa: Accolades and medals and the things that show that you're good at what you do.
• 23:47
  MVW-Melissa: And I think I'm a merit based person because I grew up as such an overweight child and teen, and I had to have a really strong character and I had to bring something of value to the table.
• 24:00
  MVW-Melissa: To get through bullying and to get through being picked on and not being seen and even that year when I was working on losing weight, when I was 19, that was also because of some kind of hinge point where I was passed over for a man management job at my photography part time job.
• 24:18
  MVW-Melissa: I was training all the photographers on how to use the equipment and I was passed over.
• 24:23
  MVW-Melissa: And I realized it was because of my weight.
• 24:25
  MVW-Melissa: It looked like I was struggling.
• 24:28
  MVW-Melissa: And to be honest about it, I was physically struggling.
• 24:32
  MVW-Melissa: And so I got rid of what was holding me back at the time.
• 24:36
  MVW-Melissa: But I think when you're able to achieve these, these big things and get through the hard things, sometimes you have to also be disciplined enough to say, not right now, Melissa, not right now, Dawn.
• 24:50
  MVW-Melissa: This is not the season for you to go all out, right?
• 24:53
  MVW-Melissa: Your kids need you a little closer to home.
• 24:56
  MVW-Melissa: Um, so I also want to honor particularly for women that it sounds all wonderful and exciting, but there's also that pressure or at least I pressure myself to kind of control my ambition so that I can live a little more of a balanced, integrated life.
• 25:14
  MVW-Melissa: And that's really hard.
• 25:16
  MVW-Dawn: Yeah.
• 25:17
  MVW-Dawn: Yeah, definitely.
• 25:18
  MVW-Dawn: One of the hardest parts about taking your own path is controlling your aspirations as you put it and focusing on what needs to be prioritized in the present moment, because we all have the tendency to either think in the past or think in the future.
• 25:33
  MVW-Dawn: And coming back to the present is just something that we always have to practice.
• 25:38
  MVW-Dawn: So it's really important that you brought that up.
• 25:41
  MVW-Dawn: I'm wondering what the best part about you taking this unique path has been for you.
• 25:46
  MVW-Dawn: What do you think is the, the, the best benefit that you've experienced?
• 25:51
  MVW-Melissa: Yeah, no, that's wonderful to ask and point out.
• 25:55
  MVW-Melissa: I think the best benefits has been controlling the controllables of what I can in my career since the work is so unpredictable.
• 26:04
  MVW-Melissa: So being able to call my own shots.
• 26:06
  MVW-Melissa: And when I did want to go after client or campaign, I had that ability to make that happen, but then also being able to say no and recognizing that not all money's the same.
• 26:22
  MVW-Melissa: And I, I find money quite hilarious.
• 26:24
  MVW-Melissa: I love to talk about it because we didn't have a lot growing up and I want to understand how people make it, but I also want to make it in a way that's genuine and doesn't feel icky and is sustainable and sustainable for me in terms of my health.
• 26:39
  MVW-Melissa: That's something that I still keep an eye on.
• 26:41
  MVW-Melissa: Right.
• 26:42
  MVW-Melissa: I need to make sure that I'm not working in overdrive because it is my business.
• 26:46
  MVW-Melissa: I mean, I already cared a lot professionally about what I did, but when it's your own work, it's like you double down on that passion.
• 26:53
  MVW-Melissa: And I want to make sure I make time to keep my weight in check, to work out, to eat right.
• 26:58
  MVW-Melissa: To take that lunch break, that's really hard to do in PR anyway, but having your own business and having the responsibility to that, it can be a lot, but having that ability to kind of shape my career in a direction proactively that I wanted to go in really has been a highlight of this work and being able to, like I said before, say no When I don't want to work with a particular client, when I don't feel passionate about a subject area, or when I feel like, Hey, this is not good for me.
• 27:31
  MVW-Melissa: This is not good for my team.
• 27:32
  MVW-Melissa: This is not good for the community where I'm able to say no in a way that doesn't necessarily burn bridges, but protects our autonomy.
• 27:42
  MVW-Dawn: Yeah, saying no is a very important skill to learn and there are many different ways to practice it and to hone it for whatever it is that you need to use it for.
• 27:53
  MVW-Dawn: So thank you for that.
• 27:56
  MVW-Dawn: Is there anything that you wish you knew as a younger person who was...
• 28:03
  MVW-Dawn: So desiring the achievement, desiring to fit in, wanting to be accepted, and also wanting to achieve
• 28:17
  MVW-Melissa: yeah.
• 28:17
  MVW-Melissa: I think I wish I knew earlier on.
• 28:21
  MVW-Melissa: Well, first, I wish I'd known as a child that my time would come, that I would get out of this body and that I would have brighter days and that, you know, it just didn't feel so gray.
• 28:33
  MVW-Melissa: And I wasn't sure what that light would be at the end of the tunnel that I would overcome my circumstances.
• 28:39
  MVW-Melissa: I think that I would have had a happier little short time day.
• 28:42
  MVW-Melissa: So I think that if we can, even if it's not.
• 28:46
  MVW-Melissa: Something that we know for sure is going to happen if we can tell ourselves and almost coach ourselves in that positive way that your time will come, this too shall pass right, the season will change, that would be helpful.
• 29:01
  MVW-Melissa: Additionally, I would say, I wish I had understood earlier that being enough, that has to be something I believe in, and that has to come from within.
• 29:13
  MVW-Melissa: So no matter what.
• 29:14
  MVW-Melissa: Body I was living in, these shells, right?
• 29:17
  MVW-Melissa: Don't aren't our ultimate sign of value for others or for ourselves and our enoughness has to come from within.
• 29:25
  MVW-Melissa: I want to encourage anyone to do whatever you need to do so that you feel that you are enough.
• 29:32
  MVW-Melissa: And maybe that's getting the degree that you put to the side, maybe that's getting a certification.
• 29:37
  MVW-Melissa: I know for me, the more education I get, the better I feel about what I can do.
• 29:44
  MVW-Melissa: And so that is something that I think, um, I can't, as you say, Don, get off the hedonic treadmill of education, because I feel like it does help me feel so confident and it does help me help others.
• 29:55
  MVW-Melissa: But that enoughness, sometimes I have to sit still a little bit and say, you know, Not right now.
• 30:01
  MVW-Melissa: Don't join that leadership program right now.
• 30:03
  MVW-Melissa: Don't go after this right now.
• 30:05
  MVW-Melissa: Don't scale your business to an enormous size or go get that big, beautiful office.
• 30:11
  MVW-Melissa: It's going to cost you a lot of overhead because what you're doing is enough.
• 30:15
  MVW-Melissa: And to try to ground myself in that is really important.
• 30:19
  MVW-Melissa: And really, I wrote my own book like you, Don, to help other people and scale some of these mentoring moments and advice and lessons in my industry, but also about personal branding and how to feel confident in the work you're doing as you communicate your story.
• 30:36
  MVW-Melissa: I put it in a book.
• 30:38
  MVW-Melissa: So that I could share that with the next generation and that no matter what happened to me, especially during the pandemic, um, this was the silver lining of the pandemic for me was writing this book was a feeling of when you are that first in your family to do something different, whether that's personally or professionally or academically, you're a pioneer.
• 31:00
  MVW-Melissa: And I think we have a responsibility to go from being these pioneers who had to figure it out.
• 31:05
  MVW-Melissa: The hard way and clear that path to being these trailblazers who make it smoother for others.
• 31:09
  MVW-Melissa: It's the mentoring and the advice and the encouragement I wish I'd had as a young person in my field.
• 31:15
  MVW-Melissa: And I hope that as we go through this work and become leaders in our own right, whatever that looks like for us, we can put that down and share that with others too.
• 31:25
  MVW-Dawn: Yes.
• 31:26
  MVW-Dawn: You know, in all of the interviews that I have done with women professionals, no one has ever answered that question in this way and yet is so universal that your acceptance and your self love has to come from within.
• 31:39
  MVW-Dawn: And I know many people who are addicted to it.
• 31:43
  MVW-Dawn: Further education and certifications as you were mentioning.
• 31:47
  MVW-Dawn: So that was such an important point and we will make sure to link your book, your website, and your podcast in the show notes.
• 31:55
  MVW-Dawn: Is there anything else that you'd like to add today?
• 31:57
  MVW-Dawn: Any other advice that you give someone today?
• 31:59
  MVW-Dawn: Who's feeling overwhelmed or stuck on the treadmill of achievement and wanting to make a change.
• 32:05
  MVW-Melissa: Yeah.
• 32:05
  MVW-Melissa: Well, thank you, Dawn, for having me.
• 32:09
  MVW-Melissa: I would encourage everyone to consider looking at your life.
• 32:13
  MVW-Melissa: As it is are you going the direction you mean to be going in or is life just taking you there?
• 32:20
  MVW-Melissa: And we should really look at our professional work and our personal lives as something that are part of our identity, but neither part of it, right, is all of who we are.
• 32:32
  MVW-Melissa: So try your life in a different way.
• 32:35
  MVW-Melissa: If something's not fitting or there's a lot of friction around it, it could be a red flag.
• 32:40
  MVW-Melissa: That something should change and needs to change.
• 32:43
  MVW-Melissa: I think too many of us wait.
• 32:47
  MVW-Melissa: To see what happens.
• 32:48
  MVW-Melissa: And then there's that catastrophic moment that we just can't always recover from.
• 32:54
  MVW-Melissa: And so to move with change, I think is really important and, and be okay with living differently than your peers, then living differently from your family, being a Latina.
• 33:05
  MVW-Melissa: I talk and I do a lot of research professionally about the culture.
• 33:08
  MVW-Melissa: And I share a lot about collectivist culture and how that impacts.
• 33:12
  MVW-Melissa: Many people of color in their communities where we are brought up to think about the family unit first before our own individual needs.
• 33:23
  MVW-Melissa: And I think that's very, very natural for women too, is that we're thinking about the harmony and the wellbeing of our family sometimes to the detriment of ourselves.
• 33:32
  MVW-Melissa: So I think there's aspects of the individualistic culture we should think about in that we need to take time for ourselves.
• 33:39
  MVW-Melissa: Think about our own needs, as well as our family and our group dynamic and needs.
• 33:46
  MVW-Melissa: And if that means that you need to say no to something, you need to, in some points in your career, lean out, or step aside or step back so that you can move forward faster or in a different way.
• 33:58
  MVW-Melissa: I think that's really important to consider.
• 34:00
  MVW-Melissa: Give yourself a lot of choices, get out of debt.
• 34:04
  MVW-Melissa: Take care of what you need to so that you can be a little more agile and make decisions proactively.
• 34:11
  MVW-Dawn: Great advice.
• 34:12
  MVW-Dawn: Thank you so much I appreciate you coming on the show today.
• 34:16
  MVW-Melissa: Thank you so much, And if anyone wants any advice, please visit me at mvw360.
• 34:21
  MVW-Melissa: com.
• 34:22
  MVW-Melissa: I'm particularly passionate about helping women elevate their presence and be happy professionally.
• 34:29
  MVW-Melissa: So I really am thankful for this opportunity to talk with you.
• 34:34
  Well, I learned a lot and I hope you did too.
• 34:37
  I wrote down a quote that Melissa said during this conversation, and it was.
• 34:42
  A lot of us have these little crucible moments, these hinge points where things need to change.
• 34:48
  And if we're smart about it, we move with that change instead of just ignoring it.
• 34:53
  I thought that was a Sage piece of information.
• 34:57
  Here are my takeaways from our conversation.
• 35:02
  Number one, people are often worried that deviating from the prescribed path in their profession will equate to a lower level of success.
• 35:10
  First off, remember that you define success, but also who's to say that you won't be more successful by any definition of the word.
• 35:18
  Melissa said she's garnered more recognition in her solo practice than she did at a well-known PR firm.
• 35:24
  She was able to have more space to focus on excellence in her field.
• 35:32
  Number two.
• 35:33
  You have done hard things.
• 35:35
  I have done hard things.
• 35:36
  We all have, and those hard things can help you gain the confidence that you need in order to face new challenges in your life.
• 35:45
  Melissa did a great job of summarizing all the challenges she's overcome.
• 35:50
  And how they played a part in leaning out and starting her own PR firm.
• 35:55
  She saved money to become debt-free she lost 100 pounds.
• 36:00
  She went through in fertility.
• 36:02
  And other things as well.
• 36:04
  The challenges you face even seemingly unrelated to whatever is happening now, apply to confidence for taking on more hard things like leaning out, asking for what you want at work or carving a new work-life balance.
• 36:18
  Number three.
• 36:20
  Your past work experiences, however trivial, they may seem helped to shape you into the person that you are today.
• 36:28
  Melissa has a keen ability to understand her PR clients due to her past experience.
• 36:32
  As a solo preneur, she talked about the business that she owned for photography.
• 36:38
  And now she also owns a small business, so she can relate to her clients on that level.
• 36:44
  She understands the vulnerability associated with being a solo preneur and having your own business and all of the responsibility.
• 36:52
  That goes into that and it helps her to connect with her plan, her clients and do her job more effectively.
• 36:59
  This was a really rich conversation with many different themes, and I hope you enjoyed it.
• 37:05
  Today.
• 37:05
  My question to you is when you reflect back on challenges, you've faced, what lessons have you learned?
• 37:12
  And how can they apply to finding your authentic work-life balance now?
• 37:18
  Thanks for listening to the lean out podcast.
• 37:21
  If you like what you hear, please leave a review for this podcast on iTunes or Spotify.
• 37:26
  So other people needing this kind of community and inspiration can find it easier.
• 37:32
  Also, you can support this podcast and learn more about the ideas presented by buying my book, lean out a professional woman's guide to finding authentic work-life balance.
• 37:45
  Lastly, if you want more information about working with me.
• 37:48
  Please visit my website@wwwdotpracticebalance.com.