Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Reframing Setbacks and Mastering the Hallways to Success with Mel McSherry
Transcript
- 0:00Today we sit down with Mel McSherry, an international business and life guide who's been empowering entrepreneurs and inspiring change for over a decade.
- 0:11Mel got her start in the fitness industry with success in personal training and building a name with her bridal boot camps in Chicago.
- 0:19Her journey took her through transition, including Beachbody, where she became a mentor known.
- 0:25For managing not just time, but energy.
- 0:28Mel unveils her unique perspective on navigating navigating the entrepreneurial journey with sustainability, sharing personal plot twists and her experience with the John C.
- 0:40Maxwell's coaching program.
- 0:42We'll dive into her innovative approach using human design to guide clients the importance of mental, emotional and financial profitability and how to thrive in those uncertain hallway spaces between life's newly opened doors.
- 0:58Get ready to be inspired and equipped with insights to become the architect of your very own success.
- 1:05As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
- 1:10Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Beyond Fulfillment Podcast.
- 1:15I'm your host Dave Goulas and this week my guest is international business and Life guide Mel McSherry.
- 1:24Welcome Mel.
- 1:25Thanks Dave.
- 1:25So excited to be here.
- 1:27Absolutely.
- 1:28We appreciate you taking the time if you could.
- 1:32Mel, you've been an entrepreneur for the past decade or so.
- 1:36Can you just walk us through how you got into business and what the journey's been like for you?
- 1:42Absolutely, yeah.
- 1:44I've been an entrepreneur since 2010 and I actually started in the fitness industry.
- 1:49I was a certified personal trainer.
- 1:51I did in home training, outdoor boot camps.
- 1:55Actually got really well known in the Chicago area for my bridal boot camps.
- 1:59And when my son was born in 2011, I was married to his father at the time, who at the time was part of the media relations department for the Chicago Cubs, which meant he was gone two months straight
- 2:12for spring training.
- 2:12Worked every single home game, took every other away trip and Arcada was born in the middle of the baseball season.
- 2:18So trying to figure out how to go to my clients homes, know, maintain kind of the schedule that I had with this newborn son was becoming pretty difficult.
- 2:28Sprinkle in some undiagnosed postpartum depression and we had ourselves a party that first year.
- 2:34So it had me kind of create or go through what I kind of call my first plot twist and that was to put a pin in my business and actually be a virtual administrator for a couple of IT
- 2:49companies as well as do some online medical billing for my father's company remotely that was located in Phoenix, Arizona.
- 2:56And I always love to include these pieces into my story Because I, I'm sure you've heard many stories where there's been many plot twists and I, I don't want to glaze over the fact that sometimes us as entrepreneurs,
- 3:09we need to make decisions that aren't necessarily in an alignment with our long term goal as opposed, you know, in regards to what we want to build as entrepreneurs.
- 3:17But it does fulfill some sort of what I call profitability buckets.
- 3:21So when I talk about profitability, it's threefold, mentally, emotionally and financially.
- 3:26And so in order for me to work on my mental and emotional buckets, I needed to fulfill the financial one.
- 3:32And those kind of side hustles of online medical billing and being a VA was able to give me that space to do so and really reconfigure what I wanted in regards to, you know, how I wanted to provide
- 3:43for my family and how I wanted to create my business with this new information.
- 3:47So that actually turned into connecting with a network marketing company called Beachbody.
- 3:53I was an online health and fitness coach for them with the focus of I just wanted to be an online health and fitness coach.
- 3:59I didn't want to do the hey girl messages.
- 4:01I didn't really want to build my team.
- 4:02I just wanted to be able to support people through their fitness journeys.
- 4:06And it turned out that I was pretty instantly successful in that realm and I was consistently successful.
- 4:15And that caught the attention of my leader as again, I was what I coined a married single mom with this now two to three year old.
- 4:23And yet I was consistently heading, you know, my success club goals and bringing in consistent clients.
- 4:28And so she asked me to create a training of like, okay, what is the day in the life of Mel?
- 4:33How are you able to be consistent with all of this, you know, stuff that's on your plate?
- 4:38And the funny thing is I didn't really think much about it.
- 4:41I didn't think I was doing anything revolutionary.
- 4:43But when I actually sat and thought about how I was scheduling my day, I realized that what was the difference between me and most was not only was I managing my time, I was also managing my energy, which
- 4:55meant when I would wake up in the morning, I would first check in on myself of like, okay, how am I feeling?
- 5:00How much energy do I have?
- 5:02Then I would look at, okay, how much time do I have to work on my business?
- 5:06Then I would look at my to do list and I would match the to dos that matched not only my energy, but my also my time.
- 5:12And that allowed me to be more fluid inside of how I completed things.
- 5:17But also was able to be consistent because no matter what energy level I was at, I was still working inside of my business.
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- 5:52And so I created this kind of quick tutorial of how I did that.
- 5:56She put it in the new coach bootcamp and all of a sudden her team's productivity exploded.
- 6:01People just turned to me and wanted to be on my team.
- 6:05So all of a sudden I found myself with a pretty big team and we found ourselves in the top 1% of the company that following year.
- 6:12So that got the attention of other people inside of Beachbody.
- 6:15So I started doing team calls and trainings for them.
- 6:17That got the attention of people in other network marketing companies.
- 6:20So I started doing team calls and trainings for them.
- 6:23And then my next plot Twist came in 2015 when I was in the middle of my divorce and realized I had one foot in, quote unquote, business coaching, the other foot in fitness, and neither of them going anywhere
- 6:34because I was trying to, you know, create the sort of balance.
- 6:37And I realized if there was a time to maneuver and recreate myself, it was, you know, a great time.
- 6:44And so through Beachbody, I had a year long internship with John C.
- 6:49Maxwell, who is like the business coaches of all business coaches.
- 6:53He's been around for decades.
- 6:55And I really fell in love with the, the aspect of coaching, of supporting people, of not being the person who necessarily has the answers but has the space and the guidance to be able to help people find their
- 7:08best answers and their best systems.
- 7:11So I got my coaching certification through him and his international leadership team, left Beachbody 2016, started business coaching, as I called it at the time, in 2017.
- 7:22And then that has just been slowly and surely evolving from being a very kind of traditional pragmatical coach where I had my, you know, my five steps, my frameworks, my, you know, my boundaries to now introducing and implementing
- 7:40more spiritual tools.
- 7:41So I now use a tool called human design that really helps me understand my clients blueprint, their energetic blueprint, as well as how they make their best decisions, their why behind their hows, so they can honor their lives
- 7:56and be the true architect of their success in their own way.
- 8:01And it's Been an evolution ever since.
- 8:05Wow.
- 8:06Okay.
- 8:09Appreciate the, the detail there.
- 8:11Phenomenal story and so much to get into there.
- 8:15Okay, so let me start, too, because you.
- 8:18You reference plot twists.
- 8:21Yeah.
- 8:22Right.
- 8:22And I, I love that framing because, you know, some of these events seem like you, you know, you could label it as a setback or a.
- 8:30Yeah, you know, where you have a newborn and your husband's gone with work all the time, and now you have to get side hustles and give up on your business to be at home and take care of your
- 8:43newborn and dealing with the postpartum depression.
- 8:46And someone could look at that and just call it, you know, a setback or whatever.
- 8:51But a plot twist, like, where did you begin to, like, frame these life events like that?
- 8:58Actually, I believe it was a meme I saw on Pinterest eons ago where it just said, you know, yell plot twist and move on.
- 9:06And I've never been a believer in step backs.
- 9:11I don't think you can ever step back.
- 9:12I believe that you can step to the side and you can get a different perspective or a kind of a pausing place for you to recollect yourself.
- 9:21Because one of my favorite questions that I ask myself and my clients often is, what do I want?
- 9:26And I don't think a lot of us start with that question.
- 9:29We start with, what do I need to do?
- 9:31What should I do?
- 9:33Instead of what, you know, what we want internally as opposed to externally.
- 9:40And so I've always had that framework, and I think it stemmed from my father being an entrepreneur.
- 9:46I grew up, you know, living through several very unsuccessful businesses and seen what that can do to him, what that can do to us as a family and how we moved through that together.
- 9:57And he also always had that energy of, okay, this wasn't necessarily a failure.
- 10:05This was a learning point.
- 10:07And he learned so much through those very unsuccessful businesses that now at the age of, let's say, I'm going to probably flub this, but I think he's going to be almost 70, 70 this year.
- 10:19He is retiring from creating a multimillion dollar company that he started with just him and a secretary 30 years ago.
- 10:28So it's been a really beautiful lens for me to grow up in, and I think that definitely has given me more and more of a example of how to reframe things.
- 10:39So they're not failures, they're just lessons learned, new information that I can make new decisions from.
- 10:45Absolutely.
- 10:47Okay.
- 10:47And also, you talk so often about energy, and we, we've all seen this to where you Know, people that are not in the right field and they're not doing something that's aligned with what, what they're meant to do.
- 11:04And yeah, you know, two hours of, of work can, can drain them completely.
- 11:10Where on the flip side, if people are just passionate about what they're doing and they're aligned and they're involved, they could work 12 hours and that'll energize them and they're ready to go another 12.
- 11:21Right.
- 11:21So talk more about like the, this focus of, of energy and how that came about in, in your coaching practice.
- 11:30Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, it was, it was just a natural check in for me first of just, okay, how did I sleep last night?
- 11:37What, you know, what's my kiddo up to?
- 11:38And giving myself a lot of grace.
- 11:41Though, to be fair, it was grace that I would also grumble with every now and then because I would have a set idea of what I wanted to do and that, you know, with a kiddo and things like
- 11:50that, things can shift very quickly.
- 11:52So learning how to give myself grace when those things happened, but especially when I started utilizing my human design, understanding the starting and stopping points of my energy, because, yes, of when we are in something, every single one
- 12:08of us, when we are inside of something that gives us, you know, passion and is in alignment with our calling, we feel that we can do it all day.
- 12:17And actually some of us shouldn't.
- 12:20Some of us should really take those breaks because we have certain elements inside of our human design that need breaks, that need rest.
- 12:28And so by understanding how your energy really is when you're in that flow, helps you not only be profitable mentally, emotionally, financially, every single day inside of your business, but also doesn't take anything away from your life.
- 12:43You can transfer that information or that energy and blend it in your life as well.
- 12:48So it's definitely become something that I feel is important because we do get too traditional with that, too structured with how to build a business.
- 12:59And we have made it very step by step, whereas we need to add back in the fact that we are human, that we are experiencing things throughout the day, and we are individuals inside of our own processes.
- 13:14So how can we connect to our individuality again, our why behind our how so we can confidently do what we need to do without the overextension and the overwhelm.
- 13:26Okay.
- 13:27And so often too, you mentioned the traditional structure of business.
- 13:31So often too we see entrepreneurs where, you know, we all know how challenging it can be and they just want to grind it out.
- 13:40Right.
- 13:40And it's you know, and you, you mentioned the three buckets of profitability where it's not just financial, but also your mental profitability and your emotional profitability.
- 13:51So yeah, for someone maybe that's not familiar with that and they're very much in the.
- 13:57Just, you know, I'm, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna hustle and I'm gonna grind until I make this work.
- 14:01Can you talk about how, how they can look at those other two buckets and potentially start to implement those.
- 14:08Yeah, those two buckets are non negotiable if you want to create a sustainable success.
- 14:15I think we get too caught up in just the word success.
- 14:19Like as soon as we hit success, we're going to feel X, Y, Z, or then I can do ABC instead of understanding that this is a process, this is a journey.
- 14:30And in order for you to truly create and be the architect of that success, you need to find that sustainability day in, day out.
- 14:39Because as I'm sure you know, as an entrepreneur, not every day is sunshine and roses and there are cycles and seasons of, you know, very quiet, scary, unknown times.
- 14:52And we can't rely on traditional ROIs to motivate us to continue on.
- 14:58We need to find those mental and emotional profitability points to continue to help us look for those glimmers and therefore continue to use that energy towards that successful, that financial success.
- 15:13So I think it's just, it's, it's one of those points where it is going to bite you in the butt if you don't take the time to take care of yourself as well as take care of your business.
- 15:25I know.
- 15:25Bit me in the butt.
- 15:26In 2023, I actually took, I put my business on autopilot to recover from, you know, from COVID I had.
- 15:36I'm in the city of Chicago, so we were in lockdown for a pretty long while.
- 15:39My kiddo, who is autistic, was doing virtual learning for a year and a half.
- 15:44So I had to be his general ed teacher, his special ed teacher, his occupational therapist, his speech therapist, plus be a business owner.
- 15:51And though I maintained it in that time period pretty well, we all survived.
- 15:57I had an after effect that I needed to go back to those mental and emotional buckets and like I said, put my business on, on hold, on autopilot so I could take the time and energy to get back
- 16:09to me.
- 16:11So when you get too focused on the goals or too focused on the actions and don't check in on yourself, that's when burnout happens.
- 16:22That's when overextension, overwhelm, exhaustion happens, and it can feel like it comes out of nowhere.
- 16:27But I'm pretty sure if you looked back at that timeline, you would see that all those spaces that you said yes to out of scarcity or just out of that momentum of saying yes, you should have said no
- 16:41and waited for a better one.
- 16:43For a better yes.
- 16:45Ah, okay.
- 16:46A better yes.
- 16:49So in terms of too, when like not chasing every opportunity, really taking time to evaluate and, and check in with yourself, rather than just maybe a pure ROI in terms of, is that, is that fair to say?
- 17:04Yeah, because you're, you're more than just an roi.
- 17:06This is something you started your business because you were passionate about something because you want to create some sort of change.
- 17:12And changes don't happen overnight for yourself or for, you know, the community or for the collect.
- 17:18It takes time.
- 17:19And in order for us to be inside of that change, we need to create that sustainability.
- 17:27John Maxwell actually has a quote that I absolutely love, and he says sometimes you have to say no to the good so you can say yes to the best.
- 17:35And it is that quantifier of or qualifier of.
- 17:38Okay, I'm being asked to do this.
- 17:41Let me take a pause, a step to the side, right?
- 17:44And go, okay, this is what's on my plate.
- 17:46Is this in alignment with my goal?
- 17:48Is this something that I really need to do right now?
- 17:51Or is this something that I now know is available and therefore, when I do have the time, energy, capacity, I can go back and look for that same opportunity.
- 18:00So it really helps us prioritize where we spend our time and energy, which then naturally affects our mental and emotional and financial profitability.
- 18:10Okay.
- 18:11All right.
- 18:12And so you mentioned within the story too, where it seemed like you had an innate ability to be a leader, be a coach, kind of help people thrive.
- 18:22And you started doing that just on your own via.
- 18:25Via Beachbody and some of the other stuff.
- 18:28Then later on, when you transitioned full time into coaching, you mentioned the John Maxwell program.
- 18:33So how did that help you take your business to another level?
- 18:39First, just helping me understand what business coaching is.
- 18:42Again, I kind of had this.
- 18:44Now I just had this assumption that in order to be a business coach, you had to have all the answers, right?
- 18:50You had to know everything and just know all the funnels, all the processes, just the, you know, the streamlined way of how you can help everybody get what they want.
- 19:01And what I really appreciated about spending time with, with John as well as inside of his team is the intersectionality inside of it all the fact that you are not here to hand them everything on a silver platter.
- 19:15You can't.
- 19:15You're human.
- 19:16You only know so much.
- 19:17You have your areas of, you know, you have your, your special areas, your zone of genius.
- 19:22And to share that as well as be open to having more education and be open to flowing with, with inside that evolution for yourself as well.
- 19:33The other part I really appreciated was how he introduced to me the power of speaking and what a beautiful resource that is, not only as a lead generator, but also so I can be accessible and a resource to
- 19:47those who may not be able to afford my guidance or just didn't even know that guidance like myself and the type that I provide exists.
- 19:56So it really opened my eyes to, to the profitability of coaching as well as what not to do.
- 20:04It's not about, like I said, it's not about.
- 20:07I have the one thing that you need to create xyz.
- 20:11It is.
- 20:11I am here.
- 20:12Here is my tools, my zone of genius.
- 20:15This is how I love to support.
- 20:17How can I support you?
- 20:19Okay.
- 20:20All right.
- 20:21And so you mentioned the zone of genius and clearly that's something everyone has.
- 20:26And so often we see just throughout the workforce and life that so many people are not operating within their zone of genius professionally.
- 20:37Right.
- 20:38And we see that a common issue in terms of just careers that aren't maybe the right fit or the people aren't happy with.
- 20:45So what are some things that you'd recommend people where if they know they're in a career or in a situation that they're not happy with and they really have genius somewhere else, but they don't know how to transition.
- 20:57What are, what are some ways that you would recommend they start to look at that?
- 21:02That's a great question.
- 21:04You know, I would again go back to that question that I love to ask, which is, what do you want?
- 21:08What do I want?
- 21:09How do I want my day to look?
- 21:11How do I want to feel?
- 21:12What is it in my day, day to day right now that I look forward to?
- 21:17Are there elements inside of the spaces that you are in that you just really, really love?
- 21:22Love and which are the spaces that you don't want?
- 21:25I think understanding what you don't want is just as important because then you can start to filter out those, I don't want to say negative spaces, but definitely those not so much spaces and kind of gives you those
- 21:38red flags faster when you are looking to transition because it is easy to stay in a routine.
- 21:45It is easy to stay with something because it's familiar.
- 21:49And moving out of that can be really scary and jarring because there is a lot of unknowns.
- 21:55But when it is something that is truly connected to who you are and what you want, finding those resources that you already have, whether that is conversations through, you know, mentors, networking, or even just spending more time in
- 22:10those spaces that really energize you and light you up, you will find those things to respond to.
- 22:16You will find that information for those next steps.
- 22:19So I think it's.
- 22:20It's trusting what you already know to be true, utilizing the resources that you already have, and be open to how that could look.
- 22:29Don't get too caught up in the.
- 22:31I already have 15 steps done.
- 22:33Great things might pivot at step two.
- 22:37So understanding where that, again, that core belief and that core direction comes from will help you navigate those plot twists as well as really just grinding into your passions, who you are, what you want to create, and how
- 22:53you want to feel every single day as you create it.
- 22:57Okay, and it sounds like using, like, the feeling almost as guidance and feedback in terms of, like, I'm on the right path here and being open to where it takes you.
- 23:08Absolutely.
- 23:09Yeah.
- 23:09Your.
- 23:10Your.
- 23:11Your system is naturally attuned to your design.
- 23:15So I've mentioned human design a couple of times, and human design is a tool that is a combination of Kabbalah, I Ching, astrology, chakras, and quantum physics.
- 23:25And it's your energetic blueprint.
- 23:26And the beautiful thing is, is that we naturally work inside of it every single day.
- 23:31It's what we were born with.
- 23:32It's what we will die with.
- 23:33It never changes.
- 23:34It never shifts.
- 23:36What tends to happen, though, is we go too far because we've been conditioned by, again, what we think we need to do or what we should do.
- 23:43And when you do come back to now this feels right.
- 23:48That is your natural true north.
- 23:51That is your guiding light.
- 23:53And I.
- 23:54I believe by taking time to understand your human design a little bit deeper, you get that validation and confirmation as well as that vernacular.
- 24:02So you can advocate for how you want to create what you want, as well as help you understand what rooms are the best rooms to be in again, what you want, and also what rooms not to be in,
- 24:14what you don't want sooner.
- 24:16So that path just becomes a little bit more fluid and that awareness becomes just more upfront and on point.
- 24:26Okay.
- 24:28All right.
- 24:28And so, Mel, with your.
- 24:30With your coaching business, who are the clients that you know that are your ideal clients that.
- 24:36That you.
- 24:36You help in terms of the the different entrepreneurs.
- 24:40Yeah, I always like to say I like to help and inspired yet overwhelmed entrepreneurs who are typically in a transitional spot or as I like to call in a hallway.
- 24:50We always talk about the doors of opportunity, but rarely do we talk about the hallways in between.
- 24:55And I love to guide people through those hallways.
- 24:58So it, and that can be in any ideation throughout your journey as an entrepreneur.
- 25:03That could be shifting from corporate to entrepreneurship.
- 25:06It could be shifting from, you know, one career to another.
- 25:09But anytime that we are moving through a plot twist, it's time for us to gather new information.
- 25:17So for us to reevaluate what again, what we want, what we don't want, what do we want to make sure that we try or what we don't do the next time.
- 25:26And so any, any entrepreneur, especially I love entrepreneurs, but I do work with, with corporate as well.
- 25:32Anytime that any, an inspired human is finding themselves in that transitional spot, that's when I love to step in and, and guide them and help them really connect to that self trust and that self confidence as, as well
- 25:46as help them create a plan of action that is profitable mentally, emotionally and financially as they build what they want and again honor their lives and be the architect of their success.
- 25:59Okay, and the hallway reference, that's not something that we hear about a whole lot.
- 26:04You typically the, the cliche term is when one door closes, another one open.
- 26:08Yeah.
- 26:09But you reference that sometimes there can be a long hallway filled with uncertainty right before you get to that next door.
- 26:17So I guess is that something in terms of you specialize in helping people move through that uncertainty?
- 26:24Absolutely.
- 26:25Yeah, absolutely.
- 26:26And help them not rush to that next door and make decisions out of fear or out of scarcity, but to learn their pace.
- 26:36Because again, this is about sustainability, a sustainable success.
- 26:40And I don't know about you, but I can only run so far, so long before I get exhausted.
- 26:45And we want that stability in our lives.
- 26:48And so by taking our time throughout these hallways, it gives us that, it builds that confidence and that trust again, not only in ourselves, but in our process.
- 26:58So when that next hallway comes, because there will always be another hallway, we never do the same thing every day.
- 27:04The environment, as we are seeing around us, shifts all the time.
- 27:08We then have the, the operations manual and the capability to move with it and continue to be sustainably successful as we continue to evolve and move.
- 27:23Well said.
- 27:24All right.
- 27:25And Mel, if people want to get in touch with you and learn more about your coaching and different ways that they can work with you, what's the best way people can reach out to you.
- 27:33Yeah.
- 27:33So I absolutely love to get to know people.
- 27:35So I do offer a complimentary 30 minute virtual coffees, safe space, no sales, no pressure.
- 27:42If you would like to spend a little bit of time with me, you can book that at virtual coffee with Mel.com or feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, MelMcSherry on Instagram, Mel_McSherry or check out my services@melmcsherry.com
- 27:58all right.
- 27:58And we'll link all that in the show notes for everyone.
- 28:01All right.
- 28:01Well, Mel, thank you so much for taking the time to be here, sharing these valuable lessons from your journey and all the incredible things that you're doing to help others.
- 28:09We greatly appreciate it.
- 28:11Thank you so much, David.
- 28:12It was an honor to be here.
- 28:13All right.
- 28:14And that's all the time we have for now.
- 28:16We will see you next time.