IAM494 – Podcaster Helps Experts Position Themselves as The Go-to Authority

Jaclyn Mellone helps experts exponentially grow their business by becoming the Go-To Authority in their space. She is a coach, strategist, Keynote speaker, mama, guac lover, and host of the Go-To Gal podcast!

She helps her clients get out of their own way, package their expertise to scale, position themselves as the go-to authority, and have their dream clients and opportunities landing on their laps! Her signature approach combines restructuring her client's business models, reframing their mindset, and revamping their marketing so that they become the go-to authority from the inside out. Jaclyn supports experts at all stages from freelancers to global brands!

She has spoken at marketing conferences around the US, grown her social media channels to a total of over 50K followers, and has been featured in Entrepreneur, Yahoo Finance, Reader’s Digest, Parents, Well + Good, and in dozens of podcasts and radio appearances.

Jaclyn has proudly built the Go-To Gal empire in her slippers from her living room in Rochester, NY!

• CEO Hack: Voxer for communication
• CEO Nugget: Niche soon and hire higher-level people
• CEO Defined: Being in my zone of genius

Website: http://www.jaclynmellone.com/

Instagram: http://instagram.com/jaclyn_mellone
http://instagram.com/go.to.gal

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/withjaclynmellone/

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Jaclyn Mellone of jaclynmellone.com. Jaclyn, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Jaclyn Mellone 0:38

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:40

No problem super excited to have you on and what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Jaclyn so you hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Jaclyn helps experts exponentially grow their businesses by becoming the go-to authority in their space. She's a coach, strategist, keynote speaker, mama, guac lover, and the host of the Go-To Gal podcast. She helps clients get out of their own way and package their expertise to scale position themselves as they go to authority and have their dream client's opportunities land in their laps or signature approach and includes restructuring her client's business models, reframing their mindsets and revamping their marketing so that they become the go-to authority from the inside out.

Jaclyn supports experts at all stages from freelancers to global brands. She has spoken at marketing conferences around the US, grown her social media channels to a total of over 50,000 followers, and has been featured in Entrepreneur, Yahoo Finance, Reader’s Digest, Parents, Well + Good, and in dozens of podcasts and radio appearances. Jaclyn has proudly built the Go-To-Gal empire to her slippers from her living room in Rochester, New York. Jaclyn, Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Jaclyn Mellone 1:40

I am. Let's do this,

Gresham Harkless 1:42

Let's make it happen. I wanted to kick everything off here with a little bit more about your background, and your CEO story that you started with a business.

Jaclyn Mellone 1:48

Sure, so well. Thank you for reading that. So hopefully people have a little bit of an idea of what I do. I work with entrepreneurs to help them exponentially grow their businesses by becoming that go-to authority in their space. That's really a transformation that happens not just with marketing or business strategy, but also by doing the inner work to actually believe that they are that authority and put themselves out there in a bigger way.

One of the things I noticed at first for myself and then for others, is that when we're leveraging our personal brand to grow our business, it's personal and it feels different. We can't treat it like we would market any old business, we really have to spend that time on ourselves and not just the strategy. Sometimes people are like, just tell me exactly what to do. But what I noticed was I was telling people exactly what to do and some people were having massive success, and some people were never even getting to step one. That's what got me to dig deeper into why is and realize that it really has to be both the marketing side and this mindset piece.

Gresham Harkless 2:47

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I'm glad you touched on it. Even when I was reading your bio, when he talked about working on the inside out, I think just as you said, Everybody's like, okay, just tell me the blueprint of what I have to do. A lot of it, as you said, is kind of alluded to definitely recommend from wrong, a lot of it will be based on who you are as a person and how you communicate, brand yourself, and do all those things on those different platforms.

Jaclyn Mellone 3:06

Yes, absolutely. A lot of times it seems so simple to like who you are as a person. But a lot of times because of previous jobs that we've had previous roles that we've been in things from growing up, we've taken on identities for ourselves that are not truly who we are. When we're stepping into becoming an authority, and really putting ourselves out there in a bigger way and growing our business in a bigger way, it takes shedding some of those old identities, some of those old thoughts and beliefs, and creating new ones that are really going to serve us to have that transformation and step into that authority role.

Gresham Harkless 3:41

Yeah, that makes so much sense. A lot of times and you probably definitely find this, you need to have somebody a lot of times on the outside looking in to be able to help you because we're so close to ourselves that it's really hard to say, Okay, this is something that's not really the essence of you. But this is something you may have picked up from your parents or from school or from your first job, just as you said, so it's kind of great that you definitely do that for clients. Of course, help him with the marketing and branding and all those things after that when all that happens. I know you touched on it a little bit, but I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper. Could you take us through exactly how you work with clients and some of the things that you do to support them?

Jaclyn Mellone 4:15

Sure. So I work one-on-one with a small group of select clients. But I also run masterminds both locally and globally. We have virtual ones and then we also have a bunch of different products and courses. I'm actually in the middle of it, we're about to launch a course on how to start a podcast. We're partnering with Furnish Turabian and hosted the Sound Money podcast, in so many different ways from small digital products for $27 upwards to one-on-one coaching and consulting.

Gresham Harkless 4:47

That makes so much more sense than I imagined depending on what stage they're at, as I talked about when you read the bio where your freelancer or your global brands, you probably have a different kind of, I guess product or service that you're probably looking for at a different level. So it's great that you have those different options so people kind of picked her.

Jaclyn Mellone 5:01

Yes, I build one at a time. It all started with one-on-one and I expanded from there. I find that having things that can help people at different levels, but also different mindsets, right, because sometimes the difference of the level from someone who is interested in the $27 product to the person who is interested in a one-on-one coaching package, sometimes it's not business level, sometimes it's just mindset, and what they believe is possible for themselves and for their business in that like time and space. Having content and courses and training available for them to meet them where they are not just business level, but mindset, and then help them move up in terms of other offers and ways we can help makes a lot of sense on on all levels.

Gresham Harkless 5:43

Yeah, that makes so much sense. I think that it's so funny because I used to say that a lot and made me probably talk about myself more than anything else that usually kind of gloss over that mindset piece when you're thinking of running the business like, Okay, I need to get my finances in order, I need to take care of the market need to take care of all that stuff. But definitely correct me if I'm wrong, but that foundational piece is actually that mindset, because a lot of times you will reach as far as you think in your mind, or you'll go far the other way, as far as you think your mind to, but a lot of it you have to kind of cultivate there.

Jaclyn Mellone 6:10

Exactly. That's why I think it's so important to be around other people who are thinking differently and thinking bigger than you are. That's something I do for myself. I try to be that person for my clients too, because it's true, even when we're thinking this happened to me recently, this quarter, even where there were, someone had asked me what my five-year plan was and remembered she did. She said, What do you really want? I gave her my five-year plan that's how I interpreted that and she was like, Well, why is that a five-year plan?

That question made me make some really big changes in a short amount of time because maybe I couldn't step into that five-year plan right now. It got me thinking about how can I shorten that timeline. What can I be doing differently now? Just tap more into that. For some reason, I just had it as a five-year plan but the funny thing is I actually came up with this a year ago, but it was still a five-year plan. It was not a four-year plan. So yes, continuing to make sure that we are like in the room, whether physically or metaphorically with people who are going to challenge us like that to think bigger.

Gresham Harkless 7:12

Yeah, absolutely. You have to always kind of make sure that you're sharpening the saw. A lot of times, the best way to do that, as you said, is to have mastermind groups that have people that can question you about things and definitely a way to kind of push us towards where we can be and sometimes even challenges to some degree and do more than sometimes we think that we can do so I definitely appreciate that. I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce and you might have already touched on this but do you feel that mindset piece is the thing that kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Jaclyn Mellone 7:37

So when you say secret sauce, I think of the framework that I work with my clients with, and I call that the authority armor framework. It has a little bit of everything in it and that's where I think when I first started out in business, it was like, Oh, this is this is marketing and branding. Then I added in mindset. Over the years when I really sat down and unpacked what is it that I've done for myself? What is it that I've done in my past career before I even had a business? I actually worked in personal branding a bit back then. So what is it that I could pull from my previous experience? What is it actually working with the clients I'm serving now? What are those components? When I really did that work and unpacked everything, we developed the authority armor framework.

What that is, and a quick overview, so it's not necessarily in chronological order of how we do things, but it is a fun acronym. So the A stands for building an authority brand. That's that brand strategy piece but also, what social media platforms are you on? What authority platforms do you have, I don't necessarily think people need to have that authority platform at first, but probably sooner than they think. When I say authority platform, I mean something like a podcast or a YouTube channel or a blog, where there is something about those three channels that feels like more of an authority piece of content, you could take the same content, and you could put it on your Instagram stories. If you say it on a podcast, or if you do it in a YouTube video, if you put it on your blog, it carries more weight, it comes with more authority because those are authority platforms. The authority brand piece includes all of that.

Then from there, we have the first art, which is the right offer in front of the right audience. A lot of people don't think about their offers in relation to this, but really your offer should anchor in your authority. Getting really clear on who you're serving and how you're serving them and having that offer really does showcase your expertise and position you as the authority. Then from there, we have the M which is mindsets, as we've been talking about, and really having not just those daily habits and routines to help us feel good but really having identity shift into being the authority and then creating those habits and routines that reinforce that and allow us to step into that on a daily basis. Then from there, we have O which stands for other people's platforms. In the authority brand, we're leveraging our own platforms with whom we're leveraging other people's platforms, whether that's media or PR, or whether that's doing partnerships and things of that nature guest blogging, being on other people's podcasts like I do today.

These are all ways to get in front of audiences that already exist with people who you could be serving. Then the last R stands for relationships. This is something that I got started in business when I helped my dad launch his business back in 2004 and it was all about relationships. I think when I came into the online space, that was just my default, right after a decade of doing business and valuing relationships, and pouring time and energy into that that was my default of how I operated. What I started to realize after a while was that other people were thinking like that they were trying to think of how they could automate and systematize everything and not take the time to build the relationships.

Relationships are the shortcut, they really are in this space, that might feel crowded to a lot of people that have that connection, being able to stand out. That noise really all comes down to connection and relationships are a big part of that. So with all with people that can be clients with people that are influencers in your space, and everyone in between, is taking that time to really build genuine relationships. That is a really quick overview of a very elaborate framework. That authority armor framework is really what we take everything that we put together in terms of strategy and mindset from,

Gresham Harkless 11:12

Okay, I appreciate that. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be an app or book or a habit that you have for something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Jaclyn Mellone 11:21

I was gonna say I was gonna say, my team, but you want you want something specific as a tool, and with that, I will say the app Voxer. Voxer is a voice messaging app. I don't know if you're familiar with it or not but I am obsessed. Actually started using it for business with my clients and my team and now I've expanded and we have everyone from my grandma to my six-year-old daughter, which is awesome. When I travel now I can send her pictures and voice messages, she can voice message me back, she actually sent me her first ever text on there where she thinks that she's just learning how to write and it was all one where there was. This is like a big progress and our relationship here.

Gresham Harkless 12:02

That makes perfect sense. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. This is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice or if you can happen to a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Jaclyn Mellone 12:11

I would tell my younger business self to niche sooner and into higher, higher-level people sooner.

Gresham Harkless 12:21

I definitely love those nuggets. Now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO and we're hoping to have different quote-unquote, CEOs on this show. So Jaclyn, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Jaclyn Mellone 12:31

Oh, this is such a good question and a loaded question. So I'm notorious for making short stories long. So I will try to keep this concise. I feel like it's important to give context here. A couple of years ago, I saw a friend of mine keynote an event and her talk was a lot about being a CEO. After the talk she and I were talking, I was like, it's funny like it totally did amazing. Like, I really don't want to be a CEO actually said this to her. And she's like, what, why don't you want to be a CEO? Here's the thing, in my previous career in jobs, I was connected to and served many CEOs. I looked at them and how crazy hours they were working and how consumed with every little thing and how so much was on their plate and the stress and the craziness.

I looked at that, and I never wanted that for myself. When we had this conversation, she was like, well, they were not truly in the CEO role. A lot of times, maybe these were smaller businesses, but not small maybe still making seven, eight figures, but maybe not compared to a big corporate-whatever, maybe they just were taking on more than they needed to whatever that case is. I had this preconceived notion of what a CEO was and that really created a lot of resistance to me truly stepping into that. That really probably started that unpacking journey for me of like, well, can I define what a CEO is for me? What does that look like in the business that I'm building in that space?

For me, that means me really, truly being in my zone of genius, and not trying to do everything, even if I can do certain things doesn't mean I have to do them, me really being in that role, where I am setting that vision and in growing a team that's able to implement most of it and I'm able to do the things that truly only I can do. While I've come a long way with that, when I look to the next year, and the year after I see myself stepping more and more into that role and growing our team in a way that I don't necessarily have to be the one even implementing on the deliverability side of things as much. We're looking at expanding and getting coaches or leaders to serve in that way too.

Gresham Harkless 14:31

I love your time even more, and I truly appreciate it. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know. Then of course, how best they can get a hold of us subscribe to the podcast, and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Jaclyn Mellone 14:43

Sure. A lot of people will say, Well, I'm not ready to be an authority yet or even I already feel like I'm an authority. There's a big there's a big spectrum there of where you can be on it. I like to encourage people that become an authority, being an authority is not a destination. It's really a decision, it's a decision we have to make every single day. It's a way that we show up in our business and our lives for ourselves and the way we put ourselves out there. One of the things I'd love to share with your listeners today is a 30-day authority-building action plan and what it does is just break it down, it feels kind of abstract, and really kind of builds authority, what is building authority.

Even after hearing my framework, you might be like, okay, but like, what do I do with that, right? Like, these are great ideas, but like, how does that actually? What we did is put together a 30-day authority-building action plan, where I actually tell you something to do every single day, it's going to help you build authority from the inside out. So it really goes through, we've pulled things from all different areas of that framework. Some of it will touch on mindset but a lot of it is touching on other activities that you're doing to build your authority in many different ways. So you're able to really have a month of activities that are building incredible momentum and getting that authority snowball going for you. You can get that for free if you go to jaclynmellone.com/plan. Other than that, I would love to connect on Instagram, go.to.gal. I'm on Instagram, feel free to send me a message there. Then at the Go-To-Girl Podcast, we put out episodes on Mondays and Thursdays. So come hang out over there as well.

Gresham Harkless 16:15

Awesome. Well, thank you so very, very much. We will have those links and information in the show notes. But I appreciate you appreciate your time, and I hope you have a phenomenal day.

Extro 16:22

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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