Why Your Past Success Could Be Holding You Back with Melissa Sierra

In this episode of Success Leaves Clues Podcast, our guest is Melissa Sierra, a certified executive and business coach who spent more than two decades in marketing and media before making the leap from the C-suite into entrepreneurship. In this conversation, Melissa shares her journey of redefining success, overcoming fear, and discovering what she was truly meant to do. She explains why the behaviors that created your past success can eventually become the behaviors that limit what comes next, and how founders and high achievers can break through their self-imposed ceilings. Melissa also shares her Opportunity Flywheel framework, lessons from her first year in business, and why focusing on advancements not just achievements can create lasting momentum.

You can find her on:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-sierra/
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/holding-the-room-with-melissa-sierra/id6783183015
https://melissasierra.focalpointcoaching.com/

Transcript

Melissa Sierra 0:00

What are some of the softer qualitative venues of success that you want to get for yourself that really can keep you driving within the momentum? So a lot of my clients, including myself who's type A, focus in on getting achievements. And our whole careers were taught to do that. And I I love that and I celebrate that. But more and more for myself and my clients, I've been looking at advancements.

Davis Nguyen 0:27

Welcome to Success Leaves Clues, the podcast where we interview business owners on how they built their businesses and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is David Swin, and I'm a business coach and the founder of Purple Circle, where we help business owners achieve their first six-figure, seven-figure, and eight-figure year, all without sacrificing their quality of life. Before becoming a business coach and before founding Purple Circle, I started and scaled several seven and eight-figure coaching businesses and have been a consultant at several businesses doing over $100 million each, including some that are publicly listed and doing over a billion dollars each. In every episode of the podcast, you're going to learn lessons that took RS years to learn, and you'll be able to learn that in minutes. No matter if you're a new business owner or an established business owner, every episode is going to give you the clues in order to elevate your business.

Pedro Stein 1:12

Welcome to Success Leaves Clues Podcast. I'm Pedro, and today I'm joined by Melissa Sierra, who's a certified executive and business coach based in Scarsdale, New York, who spent over two decades in marketing and media strategy before shifting to coaching. Her background includes serving as EVP and Group Strategy Director at USIM, Time at NBC Universal, and Founding Destination Interactive. Today she runs Melissa Sierra Focal Point Coaching, working with high-achieving professionals, founders, and executives on executive coaching, fractional leadership and mastermind programs. Hey Melissa, welcome to the show.

Melissa Sierra 2:00

Hey, welcome to everybody who's listening to us today, and thank you so much for having me on the show.

Pedro Stein 2:05

Well, great to have you. Okay. Now, on a side note, that I need to tell you something about me, which is the fact that I'm a comic book nerd myself. Okay. Kind of, right? So I do love the origin stories, the first editions, you know. So let's rewind a bit because every coach has that moment where they look at the life and say, Yeah, I guess this is what I'm doing now, right? So when was that for you, Melissa?

Melissa Sierra 2:33

Yeah, I would have to say it was about a year ago, but I think I've been on that journey for a little bit. Um, I had struggled my whole life to really get into the rooms that I thought that mattered, and that was in the C-suite. And I had been fortunate enough to find opportunities to champion myself to get the promotions that weren't given to me, but invite myself into those rooms. And I made it all the way up to the C-suite. I was the only female and specifically the only female Hispanic in the room. And when I got to these privileged rooms, I started looking around and saying, Is this it? You know, we were working on the 50th version of the cred deck. We were trying to chop through what specifically was gonna stick with our audience. And I don't know, I thought that we would be having more specific strategic conversations and creativity and ideation. But I think sometimes, you know, corporate, because of the structure of this well-oiled machine, needs to paint within certain lines in order to respect the efficiency engine. And so the funny part to that is that sometimes within corporate, there's this rigidity that stagnates a little bit of that ingenuity and that spirit of um competitiveness in a good way, you know, for that next level of transcendence. And so for me, I just felt very detached from the outcomes and for the impact that I was making on a day-to-day. Um, and Focal Point had reached out to me to see if I would be interested in owning a coaching franchise. And at first I didn't really know, but I knew that I was always keen to be an entrepreneur, having founded Destination Interactive in the past. Um, and through the assessments that they had put me through, what started to surface a lot clearly that I think a lot of my clients had seen before me was my ability to see around corners that they weren't really able to pinpoint what was needed for them to get to that next level. And the more that I look back on my career, the ability for me to really mentor some of the younger talent and the notes that they would leave me as they moved on, or emails that they would send me in terms of how I made them feel that day really stuck with me. And so I think for a long time I was trying to put my finger on what exactly my contribution was in this whole business world specifically. And I thought that I by doing the right job, the good job always would lead me to that promise. But I actually took for the stars to align, if you will, and for the right opportunities to come at me to realize what that next other side of fear was gonna produce magic for me that I needed to get to that next level of challenging myself.

Pedro Stein 5:30

Interesting. Before we get into the entrepreneur's journey here, I want to ask you something, right? Because I worked at banking here in Brazil, I worked at a consulting firm, Ernest and Young, and uh I have my own uh two cents, but I'm a guy, right? So it's hard for me to pinpoint uh my colleagues, the women experience, right? And you mentioned that you're a women, you're a woman and all that. Um and I've seen, but just by watching, right? And I might be clueless about the challenges since I'm a guy, and I've seen how they suppress sometimes their feminine side, you know. It's it's like they're trying to fit so hard into a box. And from my perspective, the guys they they don't do as much as women and and they don't struggle as much. I'm not sure. But do you think for most women uh women, is it more is it like harder to to climb the ladder in the in the corporate space?

Melissa Sierra 6:30

I think if it is, if you hold on as a woman to legacy mindsets, and that's somewhat wearing a mask, right? So for some women in the leadership networking groups that I'm in, they feel that you need to be humble, but also sticking with your conviction. You need to be empathetic, but need to be bullish on where you want to take the team and not accepting of lower standards. So there's there's always this push-pull dynamic at play. And I think it becomes mentally exhausting when you're constantly owning that mask and having to always change it up for the person that's on the other side of the table. I think two opposing things can be true. I think you can have your own personal values while still maintaining the professional values of the organization. Back in my earlier career, I was a victim of this. You know, I thought I needed to sound and present myself like everybody else in the room. And each time I try to double down on that, it was challenging for me. It was clunky, I couldn't find the right words to articulate myself, and I felt even more like a shame in terms of how I was showing up and presenting myself. But that didn't work for me because I was never meant to be like everybody else. And I think the more time that you spend really developing your character, the better that you are in conveying your words to the people across your the table. So that if there is any sort of feeling or potential blowback, if you will, on the words that you're putting forth, it is more about the situation and the occurrence and the event that you're speaking on of that problem or opportunity than it is about you as the female that's sitting on the other side of the table. And so I think if I was to say one thing bottled up around this is that women should spend more time on character development on their own subjective terms rather than trying to buck the system, if you will, and try to normalize what all women stand for in that sense. I think it's celebrating your individuality and really playing to the capabilities and the problems that you solve.

Pedro Stein 8:44

Hmm. Love that. Interesting. Okay. Thank you for sharing that. Now I'm curious about uh the other side of the journey, right? The entrepreneur. I know you you had another business, but I want to talk specifically more about the coaching side. Okay. Um, and I I understand you may have different uh opinions and for from the first business. It's not a problem if you mention those. But what I'm really curious about is like you're one year into the game, right? And with uh the focal point guys, and uh can you walk me through like the identity shift from corporate like SKP, right? And then you mentioned we have that wild oil machine running in the background to moving to your own business, right? Like, was it too was it scary? Was it overwhelming? Because for me it wasn't a while in a in a bit, and also it's almost like an identity shift, right? That you're you're you're in a birthday party. I always joke about this, and Vacky caught you off guard because you're in between stuff and you're like, hey, what do you do for a living? You're been telling that everyone 20 years what you've been doing, right? Oh, I do Axe Wednesday, and then you're into that moment that you're like in transition phase. So, can you walk us through how that felt for you?

Melissa Sierra 10:03

It felt the ick like you're describing. Um, the last two years, I've really been disciplined in putting myself out there in the corporate world, taking the stage on marketing conferences, media events, um, virtual streams, of uh collaborating with some of our partners in this space and putting myself out there around this thought leader of a marketer aligned with USIM. And I love the opportunity that that did for me in terms of creating the right networking circles, but I had almost built myself up so much into that one singular identity that then being a new fish in a new pond where people don't know me or associate me uh just as much was a shock and awe value. It started feeling like starting from scratch all over again. And I've come to now a year and love both sides of the equation. I love being a new beginner because you don't always get that sort of um phasing, if you will, in your corporate career uh when you start to be 20 years into it. You know, when you're new and you're first starting out your career, everything is grass is always greener, everything is, you know, eyes wide open. Um, but as you start to ascend, you know, there is a lot of structure and rigidity that you're working through. And those systems you're trying to optimize rather than build them new all the time. Having said that, I feel like I've grown so much in the past year by just taking on new endeavors of trying to be a YouTube strategist for my new podcast that I started three weeks ago, trying to figure out okay, as a marketer, I know that I need to create that unique USP and really hone in on who my target niche is, but it's easier said than done. And when you're starting out, because you're so hungry to prove to yourself that you can do this on your own, you want to be everything to everyone and you don't want to pigeon yourself too much. So there is a lot of trial and error that comes into it. And although you may think you're being perfectly clear, that doesn't always resonate with the outside audience that is trying to understand and put themselves in the shoes of the content character that you're um you're developing and you're really telling the story around of that archetype. Um, I think also for me, you know, being in marketing for so long, I sit on specific KRIs, KPIs that really help me understand quantitatively what we're doing. But I've always been intrigued by the qualitative insights. So being exposed to different ways to build the funnel, understanding how to optimize from lead to sales, understanding how to recalibrate some of these new speaking engagements that I'm in has also been a fundamental change for me. In the beginning of my practice, I was just so excited to get onto the stage as my own business that I forgot to put in lead nurturing and calls to action. You know, I I just thought I guess through osmosis, these people would just have this memorable experience uh with me and just reach out on their own accord. And I didn't think about lead nurturing and lead development and what that ideal call to action would be. I also knew that I needed to tap into my network, but I didn't necessarily know how to develop the communication strategy with them and feel like I could provide them with any value of how to help serve me and who to introduce me to. And I think the more I started putting so much emphasis on making a specific number in that first year, the more things started to unravel, which led me to you know some of the frameworks that I'm working through with my clients today, but that I'm a living practitioner of myself.

Pedro Stein 14:01

Yeah. Well, it's a journey by itself, right? A soul searching journey to be an entrepreneur. Like, for example, in my own coaching business, a Wayfinder, um, I help Brazilians land jobs in the tech space in the US, right? And um like the funnel, you're mentioning the funnel. So I had to to adapt, right? At the start, it was like I want to talk to everyone, but then I realized now nine out of ten people, if they were laid off, they wouldn't have money. That's one. Second, if they their English was not like at least good to you know, C1 or C2, that would be also a waste of time for a call. So how do you manage that? Because at the same time, you want to help the little guy, right? So for me, I had to create a journey, a path of the lead, top of funnel to provide them uh value without jumping on a call. That's the challenge. How do I do that? So different ways of doing so, but that was a lesson learned. I was wasting a lot of time with people that I eventually, at the end of the day, I wouldn't be able to help, okay? At least directly, okay, on a one-on-one basis. Okay, interesting. Love that. Now I am curious about a couple things. And the first thing I'm curious is what I usually call it like the journey, you know, uh, the evolution of who you serve. I mean, you've been uh a year in the game, and in the early days, you have, you know, sometimes that a little bit of anxiety playing because you have bills to pay and there's a pricing, and how you know I want to close people. So, okay. Uh so in the early days, sometimes we're trying to help everyone, right? Yeah, I can coach you. Yeah, I can help you. You know, let's hop on a call. But eventually we start sharpening the blade and realize, okay, these are the people I can help the most, right? So my question to you is can you walk me through the evolution of who you started serving? Okay, and who do you serve now?

Melissa Sierra 16:05

Yep. So in the beginning, I think what I was trying to hang my identity around was something similar that I was feeling that resonated with my peer network and that I thought had real stickiness. And so on the other side of fear is magic. And what I wanted people to understand is that if you're feeling undermined, undervalued, or just uh mission-purpose, misaligned and corporate, we could work together to define what that is. But over time, working with both businesses, executives, founders, and managers, I've really now come to hone in on my ways of working and who I serve are the folks that are struggling with really defining what that immovable object and resistance is for them and helping them curate what that next level of demonstrating who they're becoming, whether in their business or their career, is and getting perfectly clear on that. So I think most people really struggle with stagnation because they start putting these self-imposed feelings on them. Oh, it's a bad quarter because of the tariffs. Oh, it's a bad quarter because you know our budgets had to be cut, or we can't find the right talent in the marketplace. It's a bad quarter because I'm not getting a promotion, because I become so indispensable that I can't move up the ladder. But what they don't realize is that they get stuck because the behaviors that created their success quietly have become the behaviors that limit what comes next. And working through them through the self-imposed glass ceiling is really about your next opportunity. Usually requires you to stop proving who you've been and start demonstrating who you're becoming. And I think similar to what we just talked about in my journey, whether you're a founder or whether you're um a manager at a corporation, we hang our hats on our skills around that title that corporate has given us our identity towards. But what we need to build around is around our capabilities and how we're driving solutions to the problems that stick out for our um our prospects the most. So one of the signature frameworks I work with people the most on is the opportunity flywheel, how everything compounds through it. So it's about positioning, really anchoring yourself in terms of who that target is, including myself. Uh, then prioritizing who are the people that I want to speak to. I have now unlimited hours to work with the folks that I care about the most and that I think I can make an impact on. How do I prioritize those from short sprints to long-term engagements? And then preparing. What are the ways that I'm going to uniquely find um junction points into their business by helping them actually surface the problems that are causing the most friction for them that are going left unanswered? Not the band-aids, but the specific ugly, hairy ones that get pushed off, uh put kicking the can down the road, if you will, that don't get prioritized. And then promoting it. So self-awareness isn't really being um, and self-promotion really isn't being narcissistic, but it's about letting the people as a gift know what it is that you stand for, what you can provide them, so that they can tap into you, so that they do look at you as a thought leader, and then making sure that you're performing to those standards. So every coaching call you have, whether it's prospecting, whether it's a current client, uh, whether it's a workshop that you're leading, really is valuable feedback for you. People are telling you what specifically they need to double down on. And it's usually around time, money, uh, freedom, resources, usually tied within those four buckets, whether they have the same titles, whether they come from the same industries or not. So, how keen, how sharp can you lean into what the market clues are giving you through any of your community factors to really continue to re-optimize that flywheel for you so that ground growth compounds.

Pedro Stein 20:19

Okay. Now, would love for us to do a little game of pretend here. Okay, Melissa. Let's pretend I'm one of those guys. Okay, I'm a founder, I'm a high achiever, I feel stagnated, I'm spinning my wheels, hit a ceiling. I don't even know exactly what it is. You know, it's I know it's a ceiling. I need to head to the next level, and uh sometimes it it lacks a little bit of unclarity on my side, okay? So I'm your avatar. I'm your ideal client profile. So, first of all, how would I be able to find you? Okay, marketing-wise.

Melissa Sierra 20:55

Marketing-wise, I am all over LinkedIn. I have a big network there. Uh, I also have my podcast holding the room. I also have the Operators Intelligence Council, which is a private mastermind for a lot of the founders that really don't want to test um out any theories that they have in the boardroom. They want a safe space where they can kind of figure these types of things out. Uh, and then I'm on Instagram, TikTok, and I have my website, Melissa Sierra.focalpointcoaching.com.

Pedro Stein 21:28

Okay. So uh I listened to one of the episodes from you know, holding the room podcast. I looked at your LinkedIn, your Instagram, your TikTok, or even your website, right? And I'm like, okay, Melissa sounds cool. I reach out, okay, and I'm like, hey Melissa, how does it look like to work with you? Right. Uh we go through the sales process, we can speed that up. Uh say there we're there's alignment, or you can add a note there if you wanna add something. Um But the real question here is, could you please walk me through, like giving me an idea of how does it look like to work with your business, you know, structure wise, like one-on-one uh group setting, you know, a little peek behind a curtain for people that are listening, and the outcomes I can expect.

Melissa Sierra 22:22

Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing that I really want to get clear on with you, even after all of our discovery and staging calls, and you decide to come on board is taking you through the opportunity flywheel diagnostic. That's six stages of opportunity creation and really helps identify you where your biggest constraint is now. So taking all that brain dump of institutional knowledge that you have, the ambition that you had when you first started to the friction that you're having right now. And let's really dial into that because self-awareness is the greatest gift that you can give yourself, but you need the right resources and tools around you to dimensionalize and crystallize what that is specifically for you. From there, I want to get a peek inside your business. Who are the people that you interface with on a daily basis? Not just your employees, but your vendors and anyone else, your clients, to the degree that you'll let me get into that and become really intimate. For me, I'm a tinker. I want to understand what makes your whole ecosystem tick. And I really want to understand it from the vantage point of where you sit within. We will then develop your course curriculum baked out within a 90-day to six-month sprint, depending on how long you want to work at this engagement for, even a year in that sense, if we're so lucky to work together. And what I'm also going to give you is not just coaching curriculum to look at and specifically perform exercises on, but I'm going to develop custom curated tools and applications, which is different from most coaches, for you to use on the job, specific to your role, specific to the industry. Now, what does that look like? That can be a competitive intelligence audit that automates and runs for you every single Monday morning to do a SWOT analysis so that you're keen on, let's say, acquisitions and mergers happening within your industry that you should be hot on, that you should be priming the pump for and mobilize your staff around. That's also going to include maybe some teamwork development strategies that you need to be putting in place with your supervisors to make sure that they start unlocking that next level of growth. We're also, in most cases, going to work on a manifesto that screams collaboration both internally to galvanize your employees around what a shared commonality of best practice and solutions looks like for your organization, but really amasses your vendors, your clients to be on board with that too. Because the company that you keep is what's going to help you unlock that next level of growth and compound. And if it's looking very different to your current clients than it does to your employees, than it does to your vendors, we have a problem and we need to fix that inside out. We're also going to work through what your KPIs are, but also your KRIs. So what are some of the softer qualitative venues of success that you want to get for yourself that really can keep you driving within the momentum? So a lot of my clients, including myself who's type A, focus in on getting achievements and our whole careers we're taught to do that. And I love that and I celebrate that. But more and more for myself and my clients, I've been looking at advancements because momentum and motivation can feel stagnant and can feel fleeting. And so what you want to lean into is does every day are you doing the activities that's getting you closer? This podcast, uh, the next post that I write on LinkedIn, the next episode I do for my podcast, similarly for your business, what are the advancements and activities that you're doing to get you closer to that next level and stage? Because I think if you start to, especially as a founder, fall in love with who you're becoming again, fall in love with the creative process that you're able to iterate off of and find that reignited passion that gives you the time, money, and freedom to develop this business into what you love again. You're gonna find that that opportunity flywheel really comes into practitioner play for you. And then once you see it, you can't unsee it. It becomes a living, breathing, fundamental regimen for you to pursue.

Pedro Stein 26:48

Okay. You mentioned twice uh on your podcast episode right now, like about the safe space, right? And that really caught my attention because uh to me, I'm thinking that sometimes they will feel judged, uh, your clients, if they expose themselves of their vulnerabilities in in different spaces that are not yours, for example, or that they can't control, right? So, what would you say is like if you have a top of your mind example of something that happened in between one of those moments that you you felt or you had a testimonial from a client that was like, oh, I could only do uh say X, Y, and Z here. You know, do you have any examples top of mind for us?

Melissa Sierra 27:33

Yes. Um, one of my clients was dealing with a reorganization structure, and the compensation structure had changed for them pretty dramatically, and it really upended their livelihood. And at the beginning of working together, they had thought that they had to just continue to give it a go. They had been there for quite some time working through some of the challenges. And what we started to get to the surface of was really understanding that, yes, they could go do sales again at another company and be really successful because that's all they've known for the past 22 years. But what we started to really unlock was they wanted to be in the nonprofit sector. And what her unique selling proposition is, is that for many nonprofits, they have, you know, one or two people that are great at writing grants, but being in sales, she brings a unique advantage to the marketplace because she's used to understanding the competitive set around her, she's used to doing less with more in terms of resources. She understands how to go fight for budgets and how to make that incremental value behind her proposals. And that's something that nonprofits struggle with at scale. And her being able to think that actually a whole 180 career transition was possible for her and that she wouldn't necessarily be starting out as a beginner, she said really equipped her with being able for the first time to see the light through the tunnel, not at the end. So if you go back to the analogy I just made about advancements versus achievements, achievements are very finite, right? You go after that and then all of a sudden you're not happy with that anymore. You go after the next thing and then you're like, well, I thought I was gonna be happy. I'm still not happy. But the advancement and having that clarity and curiosity and connection to what you're building and knowing that it's possible and that it's not this behemoth that you need to undertake, that you already have it innately in you to double down on this passion that you have is really what gets me going and really just elated me when I heard that from her. Because no one had ever articulated the end of the tunnel versus the light of the tunnel in that word. And though it's very simplistic in directness, I love the illusion and the imaginatory sense of it in terms of what it can unlock and how she's been able to grow and perform for herself.

Pedro Stein 30:06

Interesting. Okay. Now, shifting gears for a second, if you don't mind, would love for us to talk about future, right? Yes. I'm curious about where you're taking all this, looking ahead. Where do you see the business going? You know, uh, do you think about scaling, hiring, or is that a next step you're excited about, Melissa?

Melissa Sierra 30:25

Yeah, for me, I mean, I really want to grow this into a living enterprise similar to Alex Ormozi or Heather Monahan, if you're familiar with those folks, of just what modern day leadership really represents and means, and giving the underdogs that maybe haven't seen themselves as true leaders or just leader by default of title a space to grow and uh fulfill the capacity that they're looking for. I would love to make this its own media um property, if you will, between the podcasts. Uh, there's a book on the horizon next year. Um, but really thinking that not only is mentoring people important, but being able to really drive a legacy and impact no matter where you sit, either within a corporation or leading a corporation, you have the audacity and the ability to go seek and pursue for yourself. And that leadership is no longer singularly defined, but is this whole um subset of different characters that are coming from different backgrounds, different shapes of environments that have unique ways of really leaning into um empathy and humility and characteristics that most people will characterize as soft skills, but I actually think are the unlock, especially in the AI world now, where technology is the greatest equalizer. You know, you could be the worst corporate professional in the world. AI is gonna make you sound really great and really accomplished, just as much as people that have spent their whole career doing this. But your advantage now comes from really having that uh ability to tell a story to really lean into the points that make you feel different and the parts that make your team and your employees and your stakeholders around you feel valued, feel seen, and feel heard because you want that same value set for yourself.

Pedro Stein 32:33

Awesome. Okay, book, uh Alex Hermosa inspiration, love that all of that. Now, you know, whenever we're aiming towards something new, next chapter, always something we're refining in the present. So, what are you currently trying to improve or tighten up in your business right now?

Melissa Sierra 32:51

Yes, so I help a lot of my clients with uh paid marketing strategy, right? As the practitioner for doing it for so long, but it's definitely different when you're sitting on the other side of the table. So, right now I'm working on really curating my YouTube channel. What's the right ways to create my content? What are the hanging hooks? How does that differ from the way I do my video podcasting versus my audio podcasting? I know that I'm not gonna get a lot of uh subscribers just because it's a very poignanted category and audience that I'm going after, but I want to make sure that I'm leaving value, that I'm leaving things that actually make people put things into practice rather than just pontificating on theory. And so for me, you know, I've been obsessed with YouTube analytics, trying to be 1% better than I was yesterday, watching week over week how these changes that I'm implementing are recalibrating my stats for myself. And then making sure that when I think about transcending that content across my round tables, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, that I change the angles a little bit for really being obsessed with who are the people that are going to be viewing and listening to this content. How do the platforms really change? So I listen to a lot of Gary V, but spending an obnoxious amount of hours to understand what the heck people are doing on those platforms, and how do I insert myself? How do I have the permission to insert myself into those conversations and be so fortunate for them to want to even spend a couple seconds of their time, hopefully minutes of their time with me?

Pedro Stein 34:33

Yeah, it's different, right? Whenever it's for us, it's it hits differently 100%.

Melissa Sierra 34:37

Completely different. All logic goes out the window.

Pedro Stein 34:42

Uh okay. Now let's, I'm not sure if you remember. I mentioned comic book nerd Ryan at the start of the podcast. Uh now let's step in into sci-fi territory real quick. Pretend we have a time machine in front of us, okay? And you can go back in time. I know it's, I mean, pretty fresh, right? You can go back one year behind when you open shop for your coaching business, and you can give yourself, past self, Melissa, uh, one piece of business advice you wish you knew back then, when you started, okay? That you do know now. Okay. What would that be?

Melissa Sierra 35:19

Um don't fret the awkwardness. Seek out the uncomfortable. I think I was always afraid to network. I hadn't really started to network um until maybe the past five years. I'm ashamed to admit that, but it's true. I was always more worried about the receptivity of me as a person rather than just understanding how can I meet so many cool and amazing people at once. And I think that the more that I've leaned into proximity mapping and understanding how I can just create, I connect great people with each other, and really just getting into kind of what you're doing, just really servicing the individual and putting them on the spotlight and celebrating that. I think A, the world needs more of it. B, the world is bigger than just me. And I think I had a myopic view out of my own self-fear. But I think um, if I was to go back to my 20s, I would lean into the awkwardness, whether it's of myself, whether it's of conversation, new environments, being the only one to show up. And I could only imagine who I would have been or how how far more ahead I would be at this stage if I had just taken the time to do that and put myself uh out there. So I encourage, especially in the times that we're in today, um, to really seek out that social connection and community.

Pedro Stein 36:44

You mentioned Alex, right, Hermosy. And there's a quote, and I'm gonna butcher it because it reminded me of what you just said right now, which is something like what you're seeking for is actually in the work you're avoiding, in the things you're avoiding, right? And that is so true. That really is that really hits home for me because we procrastinate a lot at the end of the day, and especially if you're a business owner, you're like um it's so easy to look busy, you know. You're like, oh yeah, I gotta do X, Y, and Z, Y, should you? You know, is that really is that really making up the most of your time? You know, is that is that where real leverage is? Actually tends to be in the opposite side. It's usually on the stuff we're don't want to do. That's the well, it's called comfort zone for a reason, right? I'll put it something like that. Now, second stop, Melissa. Um, you can go back in time in that one ear and you can select a time, a moment in time, that it was almost like an aha moment for you, like it felt so fulfilled, you know. I'm not sure if someone told you something. I'm not sure if you realize your freedom at at a certain level, you know, uh from the start of your journey. But do you have any of those right now? Like a moment that you're like it clicked for you, and you were like, Oh, this is why I started this, you know?

Melissa Sierra 38:11

Yes. Um one of the uh females that had been working with me, you know, she had made a pretty big mistake on a campaign, and I had made one, you know, back in the day too. And I told her quite candidly that one of the biggest gifts somebody gave me was you can use this to define your career and do a complete 180 and rise like a phoenix and double down and really focus in and develop this, or you can use this as a signal where it's telling you to go pursue what actually is your passion. And I said that to her not as a judgment, as a boss, but as a gift that someone had given me in the past. And, you know, she took it in confidence and she took it actually better than I thought she was. She truly understood the intentionality behind what I was sharing with her. Fast forward to five months later, she went to go pursue something completely different than our business. And she said that it was our conversation that really allowed her to have the permission to just stop skating around, um, but to look in the mirror and really go figure out what it is that was important to her. And I really cherished that that one, she was humble enough to admit where she wasn't really being true to herself, but she also understood my character and the place that I was coming from, that our relationship really was transcended beyond employee and manager at that juncture of working together for two years. And she wrote me, you know, a thank you note and she said, thank you for pushing us to always, you know, aim higher of our standards, even during the tough times, because I knew, you know, there was times where I was giving them feedback and answering them to constantly perform better and challenge better, not just for the company that we were operating for, but for themselves. Because I always wanted them to be greater when they left me than the way they came in for their next career opportunity. And for someone to say that to me that was clearly astute, was picking up on all the lessons that I hoped that they were getting on, but never really shared that uh in the moments that I thought were fleeting in our 101s and group settings, et cetera, uh, really meant this monumental for me and just really calibrated and vibrated to me on a higher level that I think that this is what I was born into doing. You know, I wasn't born to be the polished C-suite executive that, you know, kind of just gave a lot of spin and said a lot of nothing without substance. Um, I was meant for really making people feel seen, heard, but also being able to put myself in their shoes while still being the tough leader that needed to give them that critical feedback.

Pedro Stein 41:03

Okay, awesome. Love that story. Now, Melissa, if someone listening wants to connect with you or follow your work, and by the way, we're gonna have all the links in the description, right? But where can people find you best and connect with you?

Melissa Sierra 41:19

Yes, um, definitely on LinkedIn. So Melissa-Sierra on LinkedIn. Uh post a lot there, give a lot of video content, etc. And then I encourage you to check out the holding the room podcast either on Apple, Spotify, or iHeart, as well as YouTube. And we also are inviting people to join the Holding the Room round table. My next one is next Monday. Every week I share bulletin tips anonymously of what I'm learning from what I call my internal leadership laboratory of conversations, giving AI prompts, but the roundtables where we're gonna have that safe space to share things with my modern disruptive leaders that are coming from all different backgrounds. And I encourage everybody to be of service and really make those connections within the community themselves. Um, so we don't promote selling, but we do promote being the unlock to that next advancement and hopefully creating this ripple effect we call focal point coaching being a pebble in the pond. And that's what I hope to curate with this uh holding the room uh founding 100 group uh as well. So we'd love to have anybody listening on board.

Pedro Stein 42:30

Okay, you know, a few moments from this chat today really stayed with me. Let me highlight them, okay, real quick. Let's go to the origin story, right? That you mentioned you struggle to get to the room that mattered for you at the time, C-suite and all that, and then your journey uh being a woman and you know, the struggle to race to the top, and then getting a call from you know, uh focal point uh franchisee and making the leap of faith in a way, right? To to at the end of the day, betting on yourself, right? So that that really stood out to me. Then there is a quote that I really like that quote that you mentioned is the other side of fear is magic, right? So I'm stealing that, okay. Sorry. Uh I really like that because like at the end of the day, it's like when we were discussing about Alex or Mosey, right? About the stuff we're avoiding, and and there's that we're avoiding out of fear, usually, right? Yeah, and because we're afraid of what's about to happen, if chaos is gonna jump in and all that. But really like that that quote. The other side of the fear is magic, so there's that as well. And I would say, last but not least, is the fact that you're so driven into creating impact, right? We're discussing about future, and you mentioned to me that what really drives you is creating that long-lasting impact, and then you're talking about the podcast and you're talking about the stuff that is going on for you, and you're like, well, uh, I know I potentially may not have a lot of subscribers, but what I really want to do is leave value. You know, I really want to deliver value for those who are listening. So that tells me your agenda is not backwards. It's first deliver value, and then money will follow. Really like that. Now, this is my long-winded way of saying that I really appreciate what you do, Melissa. And uh I appreciate you being here and sharing so openly today with me. You know, it was great having you on.

Melissa Sierra 44:42

Thanks for everybody who's chosen to listen today and you know, the show that you're developing and really allowing people to tell their story in the most authentic way, but really original way, because I think, you know, when people are saying lean into authenticity, that sort of implies that you were never authentic to begin with. So I love originality and really honing in on that and being really unapologetically yourself and being able to amass the right connections with people to do that. So thank you for providing this for folks like me.

Pedro Stein 45:14

Awesome wars. Appreciate those, okay?

Davis Nguyen 45:17

That's it for this episode. This episode, as well as this podcast, was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help business owners elevate their business to six, seven, and eight figure years all without burning out. If you're looking to grow your business as well as get the time freedom that you are looking for, visit us at join purplecircle.com and see what we can do to help you and your business.