the bossbabe podcast - 372. Overcoming Imposter Syndrome, Why It Never Feels Like “ENOUGH” + Mental Resilience w/ Melody McCloskey

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

This week Lindsay is joined by Melody McCloskey, the CEO of the wildly successful company- StyleSeat. They go deep into all things imposter syndrome and how to finally overcome it, how to build your mental resilience, navigating motherhood, and the change of perspective that it brings to being a CEO and business owner.  TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Intro To Episode 03:01 - The History of StyleSeat 07:14 - How to maintain Self Belief in the early years 10:52 - The State of Entrepreneurship in 2024 16:52 - Ease is a State of Mind 21:41 - Finding Joy whilst being Being a CEO 27:08 - How Motherhood changes Perspective 31:24 - Being Genuine on Social Media 34:55 - The Day in a Life of a CEO 43:49 - Your Company is like a Relationship 47:03 - The Key Principle of being an Entrepreneur 54:50 - How WFH Affects Family Life 59:19 - Closing Thoughts RESOURCES + LINKS Join The Société: The Place to Build A Freedom-Based Business Get Our Weekly Newsletter & Get Insights From Natalie Every Single Week On All Things Strategy, Motherhood, Business Growth + More.  Get $25 Off An Appointment Of $100 or More at StyleSeat With Code “BossBabe25” FOLLOW bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie Melody McCloskey: @melody

Social media is total bulls**t. In my experience, the people that get the most media written about in magazines or followers on social media or that have this persona and this following are not the people that are the most financially successful in business or have the best businesses. You have to have intimacy with your business. And so it is almost like you're in a relationship with it. And you're together 15, 20 years. And you're like, I'm pretty intimate with this person. And now really, I don't have to talk about every single decision, but the big ones, the big ones take a lot of work. Hello, welcome back to the show. Today, I interviewed Melody McCloskey, who is the CEO

of Style Seat. And Style Seat is, as she described it, the Airbnb of the beauty and wellness industry. It takes all the extra capacity of beauty and wellness entrepreneurs and puts it in one place so that you as the customer can find open capacity and book it. And so we had a fascinating conversation about how she built this business and how she led it to huge phenomenal success over the last 15 years. And really the imposter syndrome and everything she had to learn along the way to be really in this CEO mindset. And Melody's a mom. So we also talked about today, her day-to-day routine and how she approaches the mindset of being in the CEO seat, managing a team. And we got deep into money and how she approaches the mindset of being in the CEO seat, managing a team. And we got deep into money and how money doesn't really change your happiness. We talked about

pursuit and mental resilience and how as you're growing a business, you've really got to balance the desire to continue to grow and want more and more and more with what's really enough for you in your life and what is truly going to bring you happiness. And we concluded by talking about stability and building stability into your life so that you have inner peace and you really look at your business as a place that removes chaos from your life, that gives you the sense of calm and the ability to take care of yourself and your family versus feeling like you're a slave to your business and you constantly have to give it more. So I loved this conversation.

I think it was so valuable. There's lots of amazing little gold nuggets in here about mindset, about money, about leadership. It was so, so good. I hope you enjoy. Melody, welcome to the Boss Babe podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Same. We were just talking offline about shared background in the health and wellness and beauty

and fitness industry and how that's changed so significantly since COVID. And so I'm really excited for this conversation just in that unique niche, but also to hear more of your story and introduce you to our audience and talk about like the depth of entrepreneurial journeys, because you've had quite the journey. So as we start here, I learned a lot about your story today prepping for this. And I was like, how did I, how have I never heard of this? This is such an amazing story. But I think you're probably style seat and your name are probably really well known in the beauty industry. But I would love if you could give a little background on the company you founded and your journey into entrepreneurship, because now you sit on the

other side of a big success. And I also want to talk about that. But I think the founder story is such an important thing for us to hear and to know that like, it wasn't always easy and you did, you had a lot of work to do in those early years where I read your quote that you were like, I, I was eating, I was putting everything I had into this business to the point where I like, I ate pizza for a year, you know? So, um, yeah. Can you give us a little background on how you got here? Yeah, sure. Um, so I mean a little bit on style seat, just quickly largest marketplace in the beauty and wellness industry. So you can think about us as like Airbnb for booking hairstylists, makeup artists, nail artists. Um, and it's kind of cool because 86% of our professionals that we support on our platform, the beauty professionals, are women.

And 66% are black or people of color. So we've got this really cool, diverse group of mostly female business owners. And so it's almost like I created a platform of people that I feel very, very like, if that makes sense. But we're in 82% of U.S. cities, et cetera. So if you're booking an appointment and you want to support other entrepreneurs, come to us. I was a French major and a political sciences major in school. Same, political science. I feel like political science

shows up a lot in entrepreneurial stories. Yeah. As an aside, I mean, part of it is just like the history of societies and commerce and relationships between humans. And you learn, you learn, you know, brinksmanship. And there's just a lot of a lot of concepts that i think are extremely useful um and the first half of the major is theory where you're like okay this is really wonderful to understand theoretically what we should do and then the second half of my major was like put in practice and it was just case study after case study of horrible stories of international relations so i was like depressed by the time I finally graduated. But no, it's a great major.

But my point is like not technical, didn't go to Harvard, Stanford, didn't come from this really, you know, sort of blue ship background. And I had the idea for Style Seat. You know, I moved to San Francisco after school. I thought I was going to move to Europe. I had this dream of like, yeah, I'll move to Paris.

So let me just move to San Francisco, save some money and get out there. A million problems with that plan. But I sort of accidentally fell into tech and came up with the idea for Style Seat, sat on for years, because I did not think that I was capable of starting a company or running a company. A lot of doubt, a lot of just lack of belief in myself finally woke up one day and had this realization that like, I'm just going to do it. And once I committed, put my, my heart into it, bootstrapped for a year and a half. And fast forward 14 years later, now we're bigger and more successful. So yeah, it's been a journey. It's been really crazy and a lot, a million ups and downs and a lot of stories to tell along the way.

Yeah. I know it's so funny, like the overnight success story, right? Like where you sit today, you can gloss over it all and be like, it's really successful and it worked and I had the idea and it came to fruition. And now we're in so many cities in the US and we have this monster community. And I know just hearing your story a little bit before we hit record that there were years where you weren't sure it was going to work and you had to go find people who believed in you. So in those early years, because I think a lot of what when we see really successful women, we tend to play to the story of like, you can be successful, you can have these huge results, you can have a billion dollar company and you can. And what did

it feel like in those early days, like day-to-day of your life when you were you finally took the leap and you did you were like I'm gonna I'm gonna do it I don't have the the credentials like maybe I'm not the typical tech bro but I know the idea will work and in those early days of of the ups and downs and the trials and having to get investors and all those things what kept you like, what practices or how did you learn the self-belief that like kept you going day to day so that you didn't give up? So I'll share something that everyone already knows, which is starting a company is incredibly hard. And there's a reason why there's obsession. There's this obsession in

business with like mental resilience and how to have the right mindset is because it is incessantly hard without fail or reprieve for years. And it doesn't get easier in a lot of ways. And so I think, you know, what I loved when I made the leap and started my business, few realizations like, holy shit, I get to control my time. I don't need to show up and do these things that I hate because I have to do them. Like I remember at a job before this where I would like key card my way into the building before getting in and just this heaviness of getting out my card to key in. I had this feeling of, I just hate the nine, 10 hours a day that I'm here. I hate that period of my day, even though I like my coworkers and there's a lot of fun. And I had friends that

I worked with and it was a cool job. It wasn't how I spent my time. And I felt that burden daily and in starting my business, didn't feel that anymore. And that was incredible. Um, but with that comes other feelings. You're like, all right, this has to work. Or in my case, my backup plan was bankruptcy and moving back into my parents. Um, I, I was in a ton of debt when I started my company, had almost no money in the bank, did it anyway, horrible choice just by any measure of that. Um, so huge, huge risk. And I definitely wouldn't recommend doing that, um, to other people, especially if you're, I was young, I was in my twenties. Um, so I had the luxury of doing that, but not, not available for everyone. Um, and you know, there's pros and cons, right? It's like, okay, now I can choose. I get to spend my

time doing a thing that I love every single day. The passion that I had for my business and the creation in the strategy building, getting my first couple of team members and speaking with customers that was elation, joy, such a gift of a way to spend my time. And with that comes, there's no money in the bank. How are you going to make this work? How are you going to pay people? If this goes away, all these people that are running their business on your platform are screwed. You know, people that are working for you won't have a paycheck. And that burden was something that I had never felt when I was working for someone else. So there's pros and cons for me, absolutely best choice ever

made, but extremely hard, challenging path. Um, there's easier paths for sure. Yeah. And you, you said it earlier too, around, you know, it's the, the 14 years later and we kind of like laugh about how long some of these journeys take how like how do you feel about where entrepreneurship is these days and how social media because when you were starting Instagram wasn't a thing right not not as much as it is now even in the mid-2010s when you were style seat was really picking up and you got your investment and like started to get all these salons and practitioners onto the platform, social media was still really in its infancy. And so now 10 years later, you know, what is your take on

the length of the journey and the overnight success and like this instant gratification? And I'm also interested in your opinion on this because obviously you built a tech platform and a community, but the people you serve are also entrepreneurs who are building their businesses, right? And so you kind of see both the macro and the micro. And not necessarily if you were to do it again today, but like, what's your observation and your feelings on how long it really takes to start a business and get to a point where it is what you imagine, and it does feel good every day, and you are are excited by it and how that plays in this like social media world where everything feels like it can be, it can happen overnight. So, okay. I have a couple of thoughts. Um,

first is that social media is total bullshit. Um, in my experience, the, the people that get the most media written about in magazines or followers on social media or that have this persona and this following are not the people that are the most financially successful in business or have the best businesses or even operating their businesses. Oftentimes they are not. I have found that the people that are putting the most energy into social and they have teams are not operators. They're not showing up and putting in 12 hour days at their company and then also doing the social media thing. And that in itself is a business model, right? We can think of very famous people that are amazing on social and hundreds of millions of followers.

And you're just like, oh my God, how are they doing that? And well, they're probably running their company very differently. And there's probably someone that has a different title that's doing that operating role that maybe someone else is doing, right? If you're reading what I'm saying. And there's no pros and cons or pluses or minuses, but I think understanding that social

media has nothing to do with reality, um, is second, you realize that the second you like, okay, so if that's not the measure and there's no relationship there, um, then, you know, what does that mean for me, for me personally, I love the operations. And I thought when I started my company that once it got a certain size, it was like, okay, well, once we're doing a million in revenue, okay. Five. Okay. Once we're doing 10 million in revenue, things are going to get easier. And then it was 20 and then it was 30 and right. You're seeing where I'm going. It actually turns out, it's going to be so annoying to hear. It's absolutely about the journey because you're never going to feel like, Oh, I've done it. I know women that have sold their companies for $500 million for, for insane amounts

of money that are bitter and pissed because actually they had to sell and they got fired or, uh, you know, by the PE firm that bought them and thought they could hire someone else to run it better than they could, or, you know, got forced out or the sale wasn't actually the way it was perceived in the media, like, or even if it wasn't really successful sale mad because they wanted to keep going, um, or they wanted to be different. And so really it's not about driving towards a transaction or sale. It is absolutely about the journey. And for me, the biggest gift that running this company has given me is that I, when I started the company, how this perspective of I'm so lucky to be here.

I've won the lottery to be in the room with this fancy investor or whatever. Um, and this is my only shot and I have to make it work, but I don't deserve to be here. Like huge imposter syndrome. Now that I've been through the fire, I've been through ups and downs. My company has almost gone away several times. I have been, you know, there's a lot of drama that's happened behind the scenes. I've had predatory investors. I've gone through all of it. And the greatest gift that that's given to me in those hard times is that I know I can do it again, right? This goes away. Great. What's the next company? I'm so excited, right? I'm not saying I wanted to go away or any of this stuff, but that's how I feel. And I know I can build it again from scratch. I know that I'm smarter about my business than any other human in the world. And that gives me confidence and fulfillment that no one can take away from me no matter what happens.

And that is a feeling that I want everyone to have because, you know, society likes to tear women down. Society likes to push us into believing there's a limit to what we can do and achieve. And still 1.7% of venture funding goes towards women. And I meet a whole men every day that are just so excited to discount me. Well, that's fine. But I know what I'm capable of. And I know that I can do extremely hard things. And that confidence gives me freedom, that feeling of freedom that I never had before. And so I'd say that's the best thing that's come out of this entire experience.

Yeah, I love that. And I mean, I so relate to that. And I'm an operations person too, you know, and it, I do feel like there is this belief, no matter what size your business is as a woman, where it's like, if you're a solopreneur and you're doing literally everything yourself, or you have a team that, um, you, you touched on that, this belief that like someday it's going to get easy. Like, you know, this part's hard, but it's, there's, when we hit this next thing, it's going to get easier when I can just hire someone, it's going to get easier. And, and I think it's so real and, and important

to talk about the fact that ease is just a state of mind, right? It's like, you can, you can find ease even in the hardest times. If you've got the, the mental resilience you're talking about, if you are confident, you could do it again. If you believe in yourself, you know, all the things that you've touched on where I think those are really the secrets of all of this is, yeah, you could you'd have a massive social media following. You can have a tiny social media following. That's not necessarily the determinant of success in any any type of business. Happiness, right? Yeah.

Yeah. You can be so successful at a million different measures and not be happy. Those things won't bring happiness. You have to bring happiness to whatever situation you're in. That also was a really, really big lesson for me because, you know, company will go up and down. And, and I find, this is the thing that I struggle with the most, honestly, which is the things that you have to do to be a good CEO, operator, founder, whatever it is, solopreneur are antithetical to happiness. They're the opposite. So like, here's an example. Um, as a CEO, I have to have a healthy sense of skepticism. I have to have a backup plan.

I have to think about the past, the present, the future. I have to have sort of multiple plans to get to success. I have to have backup, like I have to have a team around me, but then I have to, if something happens, right. I have to be a little bit paranoid and hard driving, right? Wake up every morning and create something and make it happen and close the deal and, you know, develop the strategy for the product. To be happy, what are you doing? You're living in the moment. There is no good. There is no bad. Be present with your children, like turn off the chatter. The voice in your head is not

actually you. It's just your human thoughts and your, you know, human experience, like whatever, you know, all the words I talk about. Yeah. So it's very hard to balance for me to balance those two and hold those two. But I feel that the better you can learn how to hold them both. Because if I was just sitting here on a rock in the middle of the woods, I do, I do want to be happy. I do want to run my company. It brings me tremendous joy and just tremendous joy in my human experience. Um, so being a Zen monk out there is like not for me. But I also think that being frenetic and just living, you know what I mean? Like you want to be happy because the chaos will never stop. So that has been my my biggest challenge. I think the more you can figure that

out, the happier you'll be. Yeah, We talk about that a lot, Natalie and I, around chaos and calm. And like, we've used that wording recently in Boss Babe because it's, there is a level of vigilance when you run a business, especially when you're a mother, which is like, we'll get into that. But vigilance just in general, running a business, you touched on it perfectly where it's, there's always something to be thinking about, you know, and that does kind of feel antithetical to peace and presence in the moment because quieting the mind and, and being super present. But if you're distracted by all these things you have to do, you're in this constant cycle of like, I want to be peaceful. I want to be present, but I have all these things and it does feel chaotic.

And I think that that's, that acknowledgement in entrepreneurship is such an important realization. Like I do think if you've never been an entrepreneur and you come into it, you're like, oh my God, I had no idea just how much I have to think about all the time. And then you add, yeah, team or clients, other people who are dependent on you now, and it becomes even louder in your head. And pressure, consistent pressure. Yeah. Yeah. And that the vigilance that you talk about, I think is the thing that nobody really talks about, you know, is there is a sense of vigilance as you become the leader of the company, whether you have clients that you feel responsible for or team

or your own family that you're now the breadwinner for, or maybe some of us are all of those things. And, and there is this new sense of vigilance that kind of speaks up in your nervous system. You're like, what is this feeling I'm feeling all the time? And how do I develop the mental resilience to be able to hold the vigilance and the chaos and, and this level of responsibility and do what you just said, which is like, feel the joy and be happy and be able to be present and not so consumed by the stress. Um, so yeah, how do you, how do you do that now? I mean, or how have you learned to do that? Cause you're at a level of success that is clear that you've, you've learned how to do it well and you're still leading your company. And so,

you know, you're in it 13, 14 years now. How have you weathered the hardest times and gotten yourself back online with that, that sense of vigilance that you have to carry? So for me, my probably biggest gift to this experience has been having kids. Um, when I first found out I was pregnant, I had just gone through an extremely challenging time. I had a predatory investor that had come in and tried to do some stuff and I extricated that person from my business. Um, but it took a lot of time and a lot of, there's some moves that had to be made. Um, and therefore I had to let go of, um, a bunch of my management team because whatever, there was a whole like succession situation that's happening. Um, sometime I'll talk about that publicly because it is wild and I think telling those stories are so important because I think what

I learned is that this person had been doing the same thing to one of my closest friends who ran another big company that he was on the board of the exact same thing that he was doing to me. Like he had just this playbook he was running. And neither she or I would talk about it because we were both felt very vulnerable and we thought it was just us. And it had to do with us as leaders instead of having to do with him. So I think it's really important for women to talk about this at some point. Well, but this is many years ago. Um, but I found out I was pregnant,

no management team. And in my head for the first like three months of pregnancy, I was like, well, you know, I won't really have to deal with like the whole being pregnant part for like seven months or eight months or something. And then like, you know, we'll just figure it out and I'll just get back to work right after. I'm just a dumb, dumb, like I didn't Google pregnancy once. I didn't, I wasn't one of those women who always wanted to be a mom and loved everyone's kids. Um, and what was beautiful about that experience

for me was that it forced me, like physically forced me to have less time and emotional attention for the business. And therefore I had to learn how to be significantly more efficient, get more done with less time, force myself to level up my shit and my team and everything around me. And that leveling up, you know, you have the kid and then you're in that infancy stage and then they get older and you realize like, I actually don't want to go back to all the hours that I was working before. And it wasn't serving me. It turns out. Um, cause I want to be around now. My kids are my biggest joy in life. And they're the greatest thing that centers me and keeps me present and like helps me find that balance. But that leveling up that was forced to happen has continued since, you know, now I have two and I think that was the

biggest gift because before it was like, yeah, I'll work night, day, weekends, it's fine. And then all of a sudden that wasn't an option anymore. So I don't recommend parenthood for everyone. It's not for you. It's great. But for me, that was definitely a forcing function. Yeah. I think that's a common thing that we hear a lot about too. And, you know, in the Boss Babe audience, and then we have a program called CEO Mama. And we, we, we create rooms to talk about these stories, because I think becoming a mother is so fundamentally altering in how you look at your life and your business, especially if you were an entrepreneur, you were running your own business, or even in a career before becoming a mother, and you and you have this identity of ambition, right? And you've,'ve you've you've identified yourself as I'm ambitious I want I love my work I want to have this business I want to have this

career and you have a whole vision built out you know and then you become a mother and at least in every single person I've ever talked to about it you come back to the business after becoming a mother and you just can't help but look at it differently it's not that it's bad it's but it's different and we all have to make our own choices and decisions. But I think it's a really common thread that when we look at where we want to put time, we go, wait a second. Now, now there's this baby in my life that I definitely want to devote as much time as possible to. And, but I still have the business baby. You know, my first baby was my business and I don't want to let it die so how do I do more better do more faster and have team like you're talking about

um and you know I think in your in your story obviously you built a big platform that that does millions and millions of dollars and you built a team in order to sustain that and I think there's the other side of the coin that's like right-sizing the business for your life. And I wonder because you also work so much with solopreneurs and women in your community of users of your platform that are, you know, they are the hairstylist, they are the lash person, or, you know, they have a solo business that's on your platform. What's your take on kind of coming back in after one of these life-altering things like motherhood and going what is enough like what is the right size for my business and and for me as an entrepreneur or me in my ambition and how do you measure that like how did you personally

make that decision or feel that that choice in relationship to motherhood? Yeah. Gosh, that's such a great question. I, when I started my company and I was single in my twenties, um, I wanted the superficial things about running a company. Like I wanted to get press. I saw, you know, entrepreneurs in the media. I wanted to be that too. I wanted to be what I thought success was, which was what I was reading about these mostly men and these meteoric rises. And, and I wanted that. I had this like image of what I thought being an entrepreneur was. Um, and I have since completely rejected all of that because I've realized, you know, I've gotten some of that, especially when it was more, um, you know, when I had PR teams and we were doing a lot more, I was like, we got a lot of press.

And I realized it brought me absolutely zero happiness. If anything, there was an inverse relationship because it either put on pressure that was weird and arbitrary or it created this perception, which was not reality. And I realized that this is not it for me. That's not the source of happiness. So what is, and what I have found for myself is that I get tremendous joy and satisfaction from impact driving impact. I get, I mean, I got a DM the other day. Um, and I just burst into tears from this woman, uh, who eight years ago, she goes, you don't remember

this, but you sent me flowers eight years ago. And she had gotten an article in the newspaper because she was previously homeless and then became a barber and it changed her life. And it was, and she used style state and it was mentioned in the article. And like, I just read it. It like popped up in my Google, whatever feed. And, um, I sent the article. And like I just read it. It like popped up in my Google whatever feed. And I sent her flowers because like this is incredible. She sent me this DM and she said, I put that article out. I got a lot of terrible people coming at me and judging me and all these things. And she's like, I almost left the industry.

I got your flowers. And for some reason that made me feel like I, I don't want to put words in her mouth and I don't want to read the DM because I'm going to get, I'm going to cry. But she said, she said that made me feel like I should push and keep going. It made me feel like there was someone who saw me and who appreciated it. And I respected you and the platform. And she goes, fast forward eight years, I have my own shop. I'm here. I'm successful. And I just wanted, I thought of you because the anniversary came up and I wanted to. And it's things like that. You know, if you're going to spend time away from your family and your kids, and you're going to put yourself into something, you know, my business has put $500 million into

the pockets of women and of these entrepreneurs over the last five years. And that is money that they wouldn't have earned otherwise. That's from us running ads and driving them customers. That's from a search pricing feature that we have, which is amazing for new wellness professionals. And that is what makes me happy. I think about that all the time. I hear stories I talk about to my community all the time. I also love that I get to support my family. I get to see my kids. I work from home. That is just a thing that I've wanted my whole life, it turns out.

And those are the things that give me happiness and joy. And having that impact grow every year gives me happiness. So I don't care about any of the other stuff, but it took me going on that journey to realize that like my initial desires were not actually what was real. Like that happiness has to come from inside. And also for me, it comes from other things. Yeah, I have goosebumps with that story

because I think that that's, those are the moments that also we remember like you helped her business you know and so there's this ripple effect or like the through the layers of the onion of like that keeps you going in your business and it's given you the insights and the grounding and like I'm not in this for the money I'm not doing this for the accolades that I thought I wanted 10 years ago. I don't, I've learned that I've gotten those things and those aren't what keeps me going. It's knowing that this one woman, you know, went from being homeless to now having her own shop. And eight years later, she still remembers me and the impact I've had on her life. I think that's the dream in any business is if you're not

doing it for the impact, you're going to run out of steam, right? It's going to become, at some point you're going to be like, why the F am I doing this? And, um, and I, I, I'm a big proponent of this and I wonder how you feel about this. I feel like you'll agree. I'm like on, I will die on the mountain right now of like, if you're not telling the truth, people, people feel it. And, and our businesses these days because of social media and because of just how quote unquote easy it is to get into entrepreneurship. Obviously we know it's not easy to be successful at it, but in theory, it's easy to start a business that, that I, I think that so many people are very savvy and very aware of if you're just in it for the money or you're just in it for the validation, you know, and huge backlash right now against celebrities or against people that don't

feel like they're putting their authentic selves out there or into their businesses or brands that they support. Because I think a lot of people are like, then why, then why would we support you? There's a lot of choice. There's a lot of brands out there. I 100% agree. And I think that humans, like we as people, for some reason, love to idolize. We love to idolize and admire for what we think people are or someone will be famous. And then we project onto them all of our hopes and dreams and idolize them and then we also love to tear them down yes and we like to take them right back down it's like did they deserve being put on the pedestal probably not did they deserve to be dragged through the mud like maybe not um but it's like if you know that that's the case, and so then that's not the objective necessarily.

I mean, maybe it is. Maybe it brings some people joy. For me, I just find that I get to do a thing that I love every day. I get to build my life and spend my time doing something that I feel is important. And just that practice every day is almost my meditation. And that's also something that I, I really hope and wish for people. Yeah.

That actually leads me into what I want to talk to you about too, which is like, what is a day in the life of you? Because the other thing I think when we talk about idolizing people and we talk about admiring people and we, and we measure that against reality, which we often don't see. And I'm sure you don't just as I don't show every single thing I do throughout the day because part of it is like, I'd like to have a private life. And also, it's not that significant. Like my day is pretty normal and I do work hard and all these things.

But I do think that there's still this perception that, you know, a day in the life of someone who's very, very successful looks a lot differently than somebody who's just getting started in entrepreneurship. So what, like walk us through a normal day in your life. Um, I wake up pretty early. I take my daughter to school. My husband and I trade, but one of us drives her to school every day. I like to spend the first hour with my kids. So I'll work out. I also have a big dog of 110 pound Doberman. So he needs to be walked every day.

So that happens. I like to spend the first hour with my kids. I find it to be the most happy present time that I'll have. And I can really turn it off if I spend my time with them. Now, probably before that, I've already looked at emails, my calendar. How did we do the, you know, looking at all the reporting and all that stuff. I find that I do a lot of my really important processing in the back of my brain. Um, and so it's important for me to like, I know people would like say, don't open your email in the morning, whatever I have to, I got to look at it. I got to do that. And it'll be while I'm exercising or while I'm

whatever. Um, then I like to spend time with my kids for an hour and just be present and laugh. I walked around the garden with my little baby, um, after taking my bigger kid to school, love that. That is really important for me. And then right into work. Um, and my work used to be answering all the CS emails, like really being present in the day-to-day operations of the company. Now I don't need to be there for any meeting, you know, or, or anything that's happening that all goes. Um, but my time is spent either teeing up future opportunities, dealing with big business level stuff. There's a lot of nonsense that happens. There's a lot of, we can talk about that. Um, but also thinking about the future of the business and like big decisions that we need to make. Um, thinking about my management team,

thinking about the overall team and leadership, spend a lot of time interviewing, spend a lot of time speaking with other people in the space with my board members. Um, so it's less of like fun stuff, but it's more of, we're probably going to have to make a decision on this pretty big thing coming up. And I can't, I'm not a person who just makes it and feels good about it. I have to think through every iteration. I'm really analytical. Jason has been crazy because he goes, you ask my advice and then you go ask seven people's advice and you take none of it. Like, that's true. I do that for any important decision, but I like to get data points and then I process it and come to my own conclusion with, with a lot of perspectives. Um, and then,

and then make a choice. So I don't know if that answers your question, but it's. No, it, it does because I think what I'm getting at is like the, Um, and then, and then make a choice. So I don't know if that answers your question, but it's. No, it, it does because I think what I'm getting at is like the, I'm guilty of this too, of like people get to a certain level of success. And I was guilty of this before working in the level of business I work in now and having the level of success I've had in my own businesses and going, Oh yeah. Like there's no, you never reach a point where you don't, you don't have to work anymore. And the business just keeps going without you. I mean, maybe you do if you exit or, or you like, I don't know, you set it up that way, but many people, many people will never truly have a

business that can run completely without them. Right. And so when we start our businesses and we grow our businesses for most of us, it is going, it is an agreement with the business that we will continue to work in and on the business for as long as we want the business to exist. And I think that what's important and what you just said, and I think is really important to hear is like the work evolves, like what you do for the work evolves, but you don't stop working. Like you still have a daily, you still work every single day at some level. And, and one of the things you said, which is like the best advice I ever got in my corporate career, I had a mentor who was many levels above me in the business I worked for. And I was like, you're like an SVP of this multi-billion dollar company. Like, what do you do all day? Because

I don't see you actually like, you don't, you can't be like doing work, right? Cause you're an SVP. And he was like, no, I don't do a lot of work, but I make decisions. And like when you have 100,000 people that work for you, making every decision you make affects 100,000 people's jobs. I will tell you that like a lot of work goes into making those decisions. And I was like, oh, shit. OK, like and maybe, you know, that may not be relatable to everybody who's got a solopreneur business. But I think when you look at the CEO mindset that you're getting at and going, as I get more and more successful in my business, I approach my day and my decision-making differently, but I still am grounded in my family. Like I still start my day in the way that makes

the most sense for me. And I still put a lot of work into managing the business because at my level, it still needs my vision. It still needs my leadership and it still needs my decision making. And I think that is a huge takeaway for anybody who wants to be in the CEO mindset, whether you've got a $10,000 a month business or a $10 billion a year business. Decision making is really fucking hard. And it, and it goes all the way back. I think to what you said in the beginning around mental resilience and the ability to continue to make good decisions over and over and over in your business is going to be determined by your ability to manage your emotions and manage, like continue to show up on the days where you don't

want to anymore, or something goes wrong and you're, you get right back into it. And you're like, that was, that was bad. Here's where we're going to go from here. You know? Um, That's absolutely right. And I think if I were to like summarize my job in just a couple sentences, it's, it's knowing the, knowing the business. That sounds silly, but I am constantly with my management team saying, all right, let me give you my 50,000 foot view headline on what's going on. Because everyone is experts in their domain, right? manager or your social media manager, your job is to know, you know, Instagram and TikTok up, down, left, right. What are the trends? What are the things to try? What has been performing? What is your, you know, investments tried, all that stuff. Right. And so that's true. And then it's true of your managers, their managers, the VPs, and then the C-level, right. It's my job to know

how it all fits together and how the machine of the company, what is working and not, where do we need to move resources towards, right? Last year, we moved resources from engineering. We were launching things and it was driving tremendous impact to the business, but it was slower return overall. So we moved some resources from that into marketing where we get faster return and we're driving growth with which ultimately compounds the investments we were making in engineering. That choice isn't going to come from anyone else. It has to come from me. our, you know, ROI of all the different departments and areas, which takes its own analysis and efforts. And it's very complex. And then understanding, you know, the history of where we were, where we are, where we're going and, and placing bets and then seeing how they pay off.

Um, and being thoughtful about what's the right investment strategy moving forward, keeping in mind where the competition is, what your customers want, what's going on in the economy and capital markets, like all these other things. Um, and who else is going to do that? Just me, right? Everyone else should be focused on operating and owning their areas. So, um, you know, that's an example of like, why does it take so long? It takes so long because they have to deeply understand the different pieces and, you know, develop a plan going forward. Um, yeah, but I find it to be fun. It's a, it's an intellectual exercise. It's like a love, It's a practice of love every day. And to me, that joy means that

I can stay really curious about all areas because I enjoy the process. Yeah. I wrote down while you're speaking. This is like a cosmic conversation for me talking to you today because I've been thinking on some of these themes for Boss Babe and just beyond and talking with Natalie on how we run this business and the future of it. And we have a internal Asana board that's just her and I, and it's called Boss Babe 50K. And it's like the 50,000 foot view of everything that's going on inside the business, opportunities we have externally, things that we're watching in the market. Like it's how her and I's brains work to see, to just to lay everything out and just check in on it occasionally and be like, oh, that thing's this, you know, like, not so much competitors, but just other people in the market, what are they

doing? And I and the way you described it, it is a practice of love. And I wrote down, you have to have intimacy with your business. And so it is almost like you're in a relationship with it. And when you think of like your husband, or your, you know, anybody you have an intimate relationship with, it's like, I remember all the history. I know how you tick. I've learned a lot about you. I know what works and what doesn't. And sometimes I push the wrong buttons on purpose and just to see what happens. And a lot of times I try not to, you know, and if you really apply that metaphor, I think it's exactly what you're getting at where in the beginning, when you're in a new relationship with someone or in your business, like you've got to learn everything about them. And it is a lot. And you do have to kind of be resilient to come

back when something doesn't work and go, that was an awkward conversation or oops, I made you mad. Let's reckon, let's figure this out. And then you're together 15, 20 years and you're like, I'm pretty intimate with this person. And now really, I don't have to talk about every single decision, but the big ones, the big ones take a lot of work. Um, but hopefully you're growing together, right. And evolving together and the relationship changes and your experience with it changes and, and you grow and then your hopes and dreams grow. Like here's the other part about running a company. When I first started my business, I was like, um, you know, I just want it to be, if I can just get to this size, you know,

but then you get there and you're like, Oh no, we can triple that. Let's go. So like your ambition changes and then, you know, the happiness milestone gets moved and like, yeah, it's tricky. It's tricky business. Yeah. No, I love it. And I think it's so, it's so relatable, because it's one of these things where it's, it's the human condition, right? Like, yeah, we we want to grow, we want to take advantage of opportunities, and shit's gonna come along, it's gonna get thrown in your path. And it's going to take you off in a direction that you never would have seen coming. And I think, being in the mindset of I know what I want.. And, and once I get, but I also know that I, once I get there, it may be different, you know, and that we aren't ever in control.

Yes. Yes. That's the big lesson that I've had to learn is my job is to be in control of everything that I can be in control of thoughtful, think ahead and back a plan, blah, but I actually am not in control of anything. And to accept that and say, like, put your hands up and say, I wonder what's going to happen and truly let go to whatever circumstances arrive, arise. Um, and wow, that was, that's a lesson that took me a really, really long time to learn. And I haven't, if I'm being honest with you, truly embodied it yet, but that's one that I returned to all the time. Like, we'll see. I wonder what's going to happen now. Yeah. Well, I think that that, I don't know. I think that's growth, you know, and it's so simple and I'm sure people are listening, being like, okay, I just have to let go and surrender and trust. And, and like, I think if you've ever

gotten there and truly been able to do like, I think if you've ever gotten there and truly been able to do that, you know how much work that takes, like super devoted practice over many, many years to learn, to truly trust that you're not in control, but you're ready for whatever happens. Um, and I, I do think that entrepreneur, that is like the key foundational principle of, of being a good entrepreneur is you're never in control, but you are, you can be ready. Um, and I think you demonstrate that so well. So the last thing, before we wrap up, the last thing I wanted to touch on is, is just money, you know, and this is something that keeps coming up. I think we touched on it with social media where there's all these measures of success. And so many people like seven figure eight figure

nine figure like you've your business has done billions of dollars in in revenue generation and payments and things like that and so how do you think about money now sitting where you sit running a company that's gotten to this level you have investors you've got you know by all external signs like a really healthy money mindset you've had a money mindset, you've had a lot of money, you've made a lot of money, all these things from where you started, where you were like, so broke in debt, eating pizza and like, but already had the mindset then that you were, you were fine with it. And you would just go back and live on your parents' couch if it didn't work. Do you feel like your money mindset has changed significantly through all of that success or

how like from where you sit today what do you what do you feel about it you know I used to think that money I you know my dad was a homicide detective my mom's a stay-at-home mom growing up so very probably average experience certainly not a, uh, privileged upbringing. Um, and I had this perception initially when, like when you never have money and never have had money for me, I was like, Oh my God. And the second I had anything, the second I could pay off my loans, my school loans, I'll still, I'll remember that until I'm dead. Like that feeling of paying it off was just, you know, when you're not for, for many years, I was going deeper and deeper into debt, despite the fact that I was spending nothing and living,

you know, my first job, I think I made 27 or $28,000 a year living in San Francisco, like tough times. Right. Um, and so I've been through that and did that for a lot of years. And I had a mindset about money of like, when you get it, you got to keep it. And you just got to work really hard. You've got to not spend anything and just try and stay ahead of bills. And it was almost the scary thing, like this weapon that was always used against me is how I felt about it. And now I feel that it is something that gives you freedom. You know, I've had nice things. I've had a nice car and I've had, you know, whatever the material things. And for the most part, they bring comfort is nice, but no joy, no joy, still upset. Your, your level goes up and then you want to move to a different neighborhood, right?

It's the same sort of perpetual cycle of pursuit that I was talking about with the business. And so once I realized that, okay, it's never going to be enough money. So you just have to feel like you have enough money. You have to stop the pursuit of that feeling of wanting more because it's never going to be enough. So if it's never going to be enough, then it's enough, whatever the number is. Um, and the way I think about money now is, uh, a means towards freedom. So to the extent that you can, as an entrepreneur have multiple income streams, for example, as a goal, the reason why that's incredible is because you, you move from, I have to make this work. And if it doesn't work, total devastation, financial and family devastation too. If this doesn't work, I've got this other backup plan.

And that shift in mindset is expansive and brings tremendous comfort and stability, which will translate into lots of other areas of your life. Um, so I'm just using that as an example of like, it's enough. And if you can figure out a way, you know, I used to think that just run a company, kill yourself for 10 years, sell it. And then you have enough money that you don't need to ever worry again. And like promise you, it doesn't work that way. Um, so how can you create a life where, uh, you have stability? You're not worried all the time about the really scary things of going bankrupt. Um, okay. Maybe you don't in thinking in my case, okay, maybe I don't have the assets that I thought I was going to have when I was starting this, but I have all of these other things or I've spread them across a couple of these different areas that actually

gives me a deeper sense of happiness than like a nice house or whatever. So I think of it as like a tool and of a freedom and of a sense of safety that then allows my brain to go and focus on the things that I really care about and bring me joy, which is like time with my kids, you know, things that are actually meaningful to me. Yeah. I love that. I think that's so relatable and important to hear because I've definitely been in the cycle of hitting the number and getting the thing and being like, okay, well, this one's nice, but like maybe I want the upgrade, you know? And then the bar just keeps the bar moves and moves and moves and then if you do pause and look at it you're like like i don't really care about cars at all you know does the car get making the example of the car you know like i drive a

nice car but it's not a luxury brand or anything like that and i'm like i look at the escalades and i'm like i could get you know i could i could spend 50k more for the exact same car i have that's the gmc version and get the escalade and i I like the idea of it in the moment and then like what this is so interesting like where is this coming from and is it worth the trade-off of what it would take to divert resources there versus to stability and safety and the things that you're talking about constant stress to hide to try and hit this like arbitrary things that you can get the nicer thing and in the meantime you've spent less time at home and you're stressed and angry all the time you know what i mean it's like right or you live in what you talked about in the

beginning where you live in that like heightened state of vigilance and chaos internally which maybe from all external measures everything looks great and, and you do have nice things. But if you're living in the constant state of hypervigilance, chaotic nervous system feeling like, yeah, you wake up every morning and instead of doing what you and I do, which is like, I look at the numbers, I look at Slack, like I check in on everybody and then I can have my morning with my kids. Sounds like that's what you do too. I've also been in the phase of like looking in and seeing we didn't sell enough, um, that, that person didn't close whatever and wake and then having it set me off for the whole day that like I'm behind, I'm behind, I'm behind. And that's not the energy that anybody wants to be

in. And, and I think personally, like I believe it's to see, like, I don't want my kids to say, to see mom being stressed and pissed. I want them to see me totally excited to see mom being stressed and pissed. Right. I want them to see me totally excited to see their scribble scrabble and make them breakfast. You know what I mean? I want that to be their memories. And I want them to associate my company, not with like, oh, a thing that I have to do that's stressful, but like a thing that makes me happy that I get to do.

Mom's lucky because she you know I truly want them to see that and feel that and that takes a shift that was a shift that I had to make early on because I was doing the opposite for a while and they were seeing that and then I was like oh this is not how I want to live my life kids are a mirror that way it's really annoying yeah they know they are and they're the it's the the best. I think that's such an important insight. And what is your narrative around how much you work? And this is something that I think is interesting, working from home, because I think it is such a gift to get to work from home.

And COVID really changed that for a lot of us. And in entrepreneurship in general, we tend to have a lot of choice. But if you do have kids at home, it's like instead of you just being away from them all day and then coming home at night, like my husband goes to his, to his business, drives into town and comes home at night. And it's like, they don't have visibility into daddy working. They just know he's at work, but being home all day, they see me in and out of my office. And so I get a lot of feedback around like, mommy, can't you, can, can you just sit here with me? I'm like, mommy has to work. I feel like I have to say I have to work a lot. Um, how do you manage that? Similar and the doors, my office are glass so they can like run at any time. And you know, um, I, I really love

what I do, which helps. And I'm very thankful that I have been able to create a job where I get to be around my kids every day. That is different because it used to be when I first had Amara, my oldest before COVID, I'd see her for half an hour in the morning. I go to work, I come back, I'd see her for half an hour and then I keep working at home. Like that was deeply unfun and unfulfilling. My, my husband also has a company. He has a tech company as well. So we have two and he works in the house with coworkers of his that are coming in and out of the house every day. So I think they just see it and they know the coworkers and they're sort of part of the family. It's part of the family unit. We talk about the

team all the time. Um, and we're very appreciative and we love the team. They're important to us. Um, so I don't know. I hope that it's healthy for them. I hope they see positive experiences and there's ups and downs. There's definitely times of tremendous stress, like a two entrepreneur family can be good and it can be challenging, like really challenging. Um, but it is what it is, you know, and it's sort of like, all right, we're in it. Here we are, you know, just try and like find joy in it because you know, what else you got? And you're never going to get these years back. You're never going to get this time back. You're never going to like hit a milestone and be like, wow, I'm so glad, you know, I gave up all those things for now this money that I have or whatever.

Like, you know, these years when the kids are young and when we're doing all this stuff and building as a family, like you got to find joy in it, even though you're in it. Well, I, I, I mean, I like to believe, and I'm on the same page as you, that we have no idea, right? Like we're, we're raising our children differently than we were raised. I saw my parents leave and go to work every day and now, you know, and they still work hard and they're in their late sixties. And I'm like, I just don't know that like the 30 year, 35 year career in one thing, that's a nine to five job is it's definitely not for me, you know? And so I'm like, I just don't know that like the 30 year, 35 year career in one thing, that's a nine to five job is, it's definitely not for me, you know? And so I'm choosing differently with my children and it doesn't make it easy to have the conversations

when they, they want you to come play or you want to sit for lunch, but you have to work. But I also think ultimately exactly what you're saying. It's like, if we model to them that we love what we do and that when, when we're traveling and when we're working, it's because mommy's helping people. And I love this. And this is how I help provide for our family. And, um, I believe it's, we get to control their belief about it. You know, if they see us in chaos and stress, of course, it's going to feel chaotic and stressful to them. And, um, but what a gift to get to work from home and and kids for for everyone for for boys and girls is like you can do what you want to do you you can do anything that you want to do and that gives you joy and there's pros and cons

like totally but you get to choose and that was not really instilled in me when I was growing up it was like you get a job and you do a thing and then you you know you also try and live your life at the same time and um now I think we're very fortunate as humans where like entrepreneurship is more accessible than it used to be and so I hope that my kids take away, like knew it, everyone pros and cons, different things. Here's what we did pros and cons to this. There's whatever path you choose is right for you. You know, totally. Well, I think we could keep talking forever. I have so many other things I want to know about growing a business and, and just your thoughts on stuff. But, um, I've written seven pages of notes, so I will review, but thank you so much for being here today. Um, where can people find you and

support you online? Cause I, I feel like your story and how you tell your story is so impactful. I'd love for more people to hear it. Oh, that's really sweet. Um, I'm on Instagram. My handle is melody. Um, and then style seat is style seat. If you want to check that out. I also, if, if your listeners as we talked about at the beginning, like I had a yoga studio. I'm very familiar with ClassPass and some of these, like the Airbnb models where you can fill capacity. And I think if you've ever been somebody that has run a beauty or fitness or wellness business where you have appointments, any hour that's not booked is capacity that you have that it's not revenue coming in. And so yeah, go, go download style seat, use the code, book some appointments, support some local women who are health and

beauty practitioners in your area. I love, I love the like downward trip ripple effect that this could have. Yeah. Thank you. I, I so appreciate it. This was a really fun conversation and appreciate you having me. This was a lot of fun thank you so much