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When launching your own business, no one tells you all the details that you will need to focus on to help build a successful business. You learn so much when you get started all about marketing, client or customer communication, workflows, systems, and finding your own balance. Building a successful business for yourself doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t need to be in constant contact with your clients or customers, and you don’t even need to be utilizing every platform to market your business. You can take all of the complicated pieces of your business and simplify them to bring more balance into your life like setting healthy boundaries and creating more simple systems. You are one step closer to having a business that you can wake up being excited about.
Our guest on the podcast today is Business Coach, Melissa Lin. She is a previously successful chemical engineer turned multiple six-figure business coach and business owner. Over the course of two and a half years, she was trying to DIY her online business and it went nowhere. She was barely making $1,000 most months until she decided to push past her fears and take real action. After figuring out powerful strategies and shifting her mindset, she went from barely making it to fully thriving in it. Now she helps other women do the same with their businesses!
In this episode, Melissa and I dive into:
- How she became a chemical engineer and transitioned into a successful six-figure business coach
- Her favorite marketing platform for her business and the many marketing struggles that you face when launching your business
- Key factors for success as an introverted entrepreneur
- Setting boundaries in your business to help you find your balance
- …and much more
From Chemical Engineer to Successful Six-Figure Business Coach
Growing up in a very traditional family, Melissa being half Chinese was the granddaughter of immigrants from Hong Kong who moved to America. They spoke no English, but repeatedly put the words doctor and husband in her head growing up. They wanted her to be happy, successful, and thrive in life. Melissa tried becoming a doctor in college, but she couldn’t handle blood and even passed out in one of her health classes. Being really great with math and science though, her parents helped her shift into chemical engineering. Once she got her college degree, she started working full-time as a chemical engineer. Sometimes she would work between 12-15 hours a day, be on call 24/7, and only have one week of vacation. She had always heard that working hard in your 20s allows your 30s, 40s, and 50s to be so much easier. She questioned her success. She had made it, right? She knew she had a successful career, but seeing her bosses always working late hours made her second guess her career path.
She had been really into health and fitness, doing bikini competitions, and bodybuilding, so when people started reaching out to her on Instagram for help she became a health and fitness coach. Because she loved the business side of what she was doing more, she eventually transitioned into a business coach about three and a half to four years ago. It was difficult for her at the beginning of her transition because she wasn’t surrounded by other like-minded individuals in the entrepreneurial space, but she did have supportive parents helping her along the way. It’s crazy to her how fast it has all happened since business coaching, but she absolutely loves getting to help other female entrepreneurs start and scale their own businesses using her offer suite. She has built a very successful coaching business focusing on and helping her clients by creating offers that help them in any stage of their business.
Marketing Struggles After Launching Your Own Business
A huge percentage of starting and running your business is centered around marketing your business. Being an introverted entrepreneur can make this more of a challenge. Especially when you are a new business owner, you feel the need to be on every platform doing all of the things. That is the exact opposite of what Melissa recommends. It is best to focus your time on two platforms at the most, and focus on ones that your ideal clients are hanging out on. For Melissa, she works with service-based businesses, coaches, and other online businesses, so Instagram and Facebook are where she spends most of her time marketing. She believes there is so much that you can do with adding value, selling and connecting with people in DMs, live video, or responding through comments. Otherwise, you will become overwhelmed with all of the features that each platform offers. It’s not sustainable to spread yourself thin by putting 10% of your time on each platform like Youtube, Tik-Tok, Pinterest, or Instagram. You are on these platforms to make an impact for your ideal clients, so keep your platform list small and focus on flourishing there.
Key Factors For Success as an Introverted Entrepreneur
What things can you begin to incorporate into your business that will help you become more successful? There are two key factors that Melissa relies on that have driven her success.
Stepping out of your comfort zone
Always keep going
Keeping these two things in mind as you run your business is where Melissa says the magic happens. It is where she sees entrepreneurs succeed versus those that don’t necessarily succeed, or maybe stop or give up. When you go beyond your comfort zone and do things that others don’t really want to do is when you move into that next level. There are going to be so many times in business where it doesn’t go how you want it to go, or it’s not what you expected. There might be a surprise here and there and you want to be open to pivoting. There may be moments where you feel like your business is burning down, but it’s important to keep going and create that impact for your ideal clients. As you move your business forward, new challenges will arise, but it’s how you overcome them that matters. Do something every day or on a weekly basis that scares you because that is what is going to keep the needle moving forward towards the success you want for your business. It may seem like entrepreneurship is smooth sailing once you hit the six-figure mark, but it doesn’t matter where you’re at as you continue to grow, scale, and change things up. You’re always going to have new mindset issues and new things that you have to push through to keep moving forward.
Finding Your Balance and Setting Boundaries in Your Business
Something that Melissa talks a lot about is finding a lifestyle balance while being an entrepreneur. It’s so easy at the beginning of your business journey to spend 60+ hours a week doing things inside of your business and makes it hard to find that balance. It’s one of the reasons most new entrepreneurs start their business is to create balance with more freedom of time, freedom of money, or just being able to go and live your life without working outrageous hours. For Melissa, it was so that she could go travel, go enjoy life, and create memories, not to just hustle, hustle, hustle until she retires.
One of the biggest things to find your balance is to create boundaries, and actually hold to those boundaries. There are a lot of boundaries Melissa wishes she had when first started her business that she is so hard about now. She used to work on her business non-stop to answer Voxer messages from clients 24/7, and had an attachment to being a helper by giving so much of her time away. It started to impact her mental health, so she started putting boundaries in place for her business and personal life.
She created business hours, so that she wasn’t working all of the time. She put that time in her contracts with clients, and quit answering messages from them all day long. She only answers messages from them three times a day. Another thing she does is turn off her notifications on her phone to keep her business activities separate from her personal life. She now keeps work-related emails, apps, and social media on her laptop. It can be hard as introverts, who also tend to be people-pleasers, to keep themselves accountable with setting and holding on to boundaries, but the more you stay true to your boundaries the better you protect your energy.
Advice For Starting Your Own Coaching Business
Have you wanted to start your own coaching business, but don’t know where to start? Melissa has been in your shoes before and has some really great advice for you on starting your own. The first thing she mentions is that you just start. This is the hardest part for so many people because of the what if’s involved, but taking daily action to move the business forward is how you keep the momentum going. Even though she has already mentioned it above, she says to always keep going. Something that she truly believes is that your value is your pitch at the end of the day. Melissa shows up, and adds value on her platforms each day, regardless if someone’s going to purchase from her or not. What matters to her is creating an impact in this world and helping others regardless of what happens because it’s a huge non-negotiable for her in business. It is definitely something she recommends, especially in the early days of your business.
Another great thing is to focus on your foundations first. Melissa didn’t have a full-blown website until she was making $10K to $15K months in her business, so don’t let that stop you from launching your business. Having simple systems in your business lessens the complications that come along with running a business, and can actually help you grow, especially as a coach or service-based business. The last thing that Melissa mentions is to focus on building relationships with people and being intentional about those relationships because it really helps you find that success.
Offering Multiple Programs Based on Customer’s Specific Journey
If you have ever held back on launching any of your programs or offers because it wasn’t perfect, then know that people need to see your offers. Being perfect from the very beginning is what is holding you back. If you have a program that you want to launch, but you don’t have all of the modules together yet, it is actually okay. You can launch it now and finish up the rest of the modules as you go. Melissa has sold many of her programs before it was even fully put together. Keep the program simple if you need to and don’t focus on how fancy you can make it from the very beginning. You can add those things in later.
Melissa actually has a whole offer suite that helps serve any entrepreneur no matter what level of they are at in their business. The program for beginners is The Fierce Business Academy, which helps entrepreneurs, coaches, service-based businesses, and anyone just starting to help them determine their niche, creating their first program, signing clients, and scaling to 5K months. Her next mid-tier program is Six-Figure Fierce Business Mastermind. This is great for anyone wanting to scale to 10K months. This is where you look at both the front-end and the back-end of your business, hiring your first few team members, adding systems into your business, more automation, and really expanding your product suite so that you have more upsells or down cells. She has a number of other courses that you can find on her website to see if anything fits your needs in helping you get to the next level of your business.
Melissa gave so many impactful tips on setting boundaries and building a successful business, especially as an introvert, on this podcast episode today. She shared how she became a chemical engineer and transitioned into a successful six-figure business coach, her favorite marketing platform for her business and the many marketing struggles that you face when launching your business, key factors for success as an introverted entrepreneur, setting boundaries in your business to help you find your balance, the best advice for starting your very own coaching business, and how setting up your offer or product suite in a way that assists your client or customer on their journey.
Don’t forget to follow Melissa on Instagram for more informative tips on starting and scaling your own business along with setting those healthy boundaries with clients. No matter where you are at in your business, feel free to check out all of Melissa’s programs or binge her Fierce Business Babe Podcast.
What are some of the boundaries you can start implementing in your business now to help protect your energy and simplify your business? Tag me on Instagram @introvertcoach with one of the boundaries you plan to incorporate.
a breakdown of this episode
[1:46] How Melissa started her career path as a chemical engineer to becoming a successful six-figure business coach for other female entrepreneurs
[7:55] Melissa’s favorite marketing platform and the struggle of newer entrepreneurs to feel like they need to be on all of the platforms
[10:19] The biggest drivers of success especially for introverted entrepreneurs
[14:20] How to find a lifestyle balance as an entrepreneur and setting healthy boundaries
[22:46] The best tips for anyone looking to launch their own coaching business
[26:36] Offering more than one program and being able to serve your client or customer at different levels of their business
If you enjoyed this episode, I invite you to take a screenshot and tag me on your Instagram stories @introvertcoach and tell me your biggest takeaway!
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