IAM611- Business Coach Helps Women Build Online Businesses

Melissa Lin is a previously successful chemical engineer turned multiple six-figure business coach and business owner. She is a business, sales, and content expert in the online space. Melissa went from being stuck in my 9-5 to making multiple five-figure months and working for herself. Now she helps other women do the same with their online businesses!

• CEO Hack: Thrive Cart, Asana, Go-Giver/Compound  Affect
• CEO Nugget: Show up every day, Keep going
• CEO Definition: Responsibility, giving, focus outwards, honesty, integrity, love, creating

Start today/keep going

Website: https://www.themelissalin.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themelissalin/
Free Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/fiercebusinessbabes/

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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 Melissa Lin, a business coach on the show. Melissa, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Melissa Lin 0:36

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here and chat with your audience.

Gresham Harkless 0:41

Yes, absolutely. It should be a very exciting conversation. Before we jump straight in, I want to read a little bit more about Melissa so you hear about all the awesome things that she's doing.

Melissa Lin is a previously successful chemical engineer turned multiple six-figure business coach and business owner. She is a business, sales, and content expert in the online space. Melissa went from being stuck in my 9-5 to making multiple five-figure months and working for herself. Now she helps other women do the same with their online businesses.

Melissa, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Melissa Lin 1:11

I am so ready. I'm so excited.

Gresham Harkless 1:13

Awesome. Let's do it. So to jump straight in, I wanted to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you to get started in your business.

Melissa Lin 1:20

Yes, so it's quite the story as you guys heard of my bio-chemical engineer to business coach. How did that even happen? I don't have my MBA. That's okay, I'm living the real-life MBA, but I'll go ahead into my story. So I grew up the traditional route. I'm half-Chinese. I kid you not like my grandparents, they spoke no English, but they did know a few words, one was husband, one was Doctor. They knew those two words and were drilled into my head very young, that's what I need to be successful. I learned very quickly, I could not handle blood, which meant I had to do something else. They settled for the engineer. No, my sales were bad. They were okay with that.

Just growing up, my parents always pushed me into education. I started taking college math classes at age 11. I was tutoring other college students at 12. Always above and beyond when other kids were at soccer camp, I was literally at an engineering camp. So it's really drilled into my head this is what I needed to do. I was great at math and science, so I was like, okay, cool, this makes life easy. But as I got into the real world, after I graduated with my degree, I started to see a trend. I was working long hours, I was in the engineering field working my nine-to-five, which is more of a five-to-five, for about five or six years before I moved out of it into my business full-time.

I was just working constantly, 12-15 hour days, long commutes working weekends on call literally 24/7, and just a slave to my job with one week of vacation a year. So I never left, I never went on vacation. I was a workaholic, literally a workaholic. I thought to myself, like I'm I not going to leave North America until I'm, I don't know, 70 when I eventually retire? Like am I even gonna be able to walk up or across the bridges and the mountains and go camping and hiking? Like no. So I had all of these big dreams, like I want to be able to travel the world six months out of the year, I want to go and live in Thailand for a month, I want to go and live in London for months at a time and really just experience life and start to give back to charity, start my own charity at some point. Unfortunately, I could not do that with my nine-to-five. If I had stayed in my engineering job for another five years, and got my MBA, I probably would have been maxed at an income of like 150 a year, maybe 200 at best.

That might sound like a lot of money to a lot of people, however for what I want to do and what I want to accomplish in life, it's not even close to what I'm going to need. So I knew I had to do something different. I either needed to squish my dream bubble, or do something about how the income was coming in. There was no way in the world I was going to do anything different about my dreams, I was not going to crush them. I was going to make them bigger. So at the time, while I was an engineer, all of this was happening. I was really into fitness. So I was doing bikini competitions. I looked amazing. I was all over social media and people started to come to me, Melissa, you look amazing. Can you help me like a light bulb went off?

Wow, I can help people with this. So I started doing fitness coaching and did that for about three and a half years on the side while in my nine-to-five, living two completely different lives. People might end if I had no idea. I was even doing bikini competitions. I was living two different identities. I built that business on the side to six figures and started helping some other friends in the industry with it as well and soon transitioned to business coaching. So I was helping just fitness coaches and then in the last year and a half I've expanded to all coaches so I work with life coaches, love coaches, relationship coaches, other business coaches, social media coaches, virtual assistants, graphic designers any kind of service or product base or in the online space. So that's how I transformed from chemical engineering to fitness coach to business coach.

I've been full-time business coaching for over two years now and it's been absolutely incredible. I love it so much. My Empire is just growing, growing, growing. We're probably going to be hiring a few more employees this year. It's just so crazy, but so cool because I'm now creating the impact that I actually want to create. I'm helping other women leave their jobs and helping other women be able to go and find their freedom and go travel and not stress about money coming in paycheck to paycheck. It's just absolutely beautiful what I've been able to do, and it's not stopping anytime soon. So that's my story in a quick nutshell.

Gresham Harkless 5:50

Nice, I definitely appreciate that and appreciate you for telling every aspect of the story, because I think so many times you hear and see where people are, you don't really see that background of how they got to where they are. I think that as you kind of said when you start to hear somebody's story, you even start to see somebody's success, and kind of empowers you to know that story. To know that even if you're frustrated, you don't like the path that you're going on, you can kind of rewrite your story, so to speak, and be exactly what you always envisioned that you would be if you want it to be.

Melissa Lin 6:18

Yes, 100% It might feel scary, but you can make your own path.

Gresham Harkless 6:23

Yes, absolutely. You do have to have some bravery mixed in here for sure to be able to go on a different path and to switch gears, so to speak.

So I know you touched on it a little bit, could you tell us a little bit more about how exactly you work with clients and what exactly you do?

Melissa Lin 6:37

Yeah, 100%. So I have some coaching programs. I also have courses. Passive income is definitely a big thing that I want to be able to create in my business so I can go and travel more. I have many different containers, I work with beginner coaches who have no idea what they want to do in their businesses yet to business owners who are looking to really scale to 10k, 15, 20, 30, and even 50k months in their businesses and so everything is fully online. I do zoom coaching calls with my girls, I've got all like video training.

I love showing a lot of behind-the-scenes of my business to all of my clients because you really need people to see how something runs in order to build and run something yourself and create it yourself. So it's a lot of coaching. Then I'm starting to create a few more courses. I think I've got a sales course right now, a lead generation course and I've launched a course as well. So I'm just creating more in a big creativity mode right now.

Gresham Harkless 7:34

Nice. Definitely always have to be that especially as a business owner, and also being aware, as you talked about when you were starting and doing the fitness brand that you had and you were building and you saw that you were able to help out people, you have to have that same creativity and production mindset when you're growing your business.

Melissa Lin 7:52

Yeah, I'm 100%.

Gresham Harkless 7:54

Awesome. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. It can be for you personally or your business, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Melissa Lin 8:03

Yeah, so this might sound silly to some people, but at the end of the day, it's just me, right? Like, I'm what makes my business unique because of my personality, who I am, my background, the expertise that I bring. I think a big part of it is just my story of leaving my well-paid nine-to-five. I was pretty close to making six figures in my engineering job and from the outside, everything looked so great, but I was so unhappy on the inside.

So setting that example for everyone out there as well that you don't have to take that same path. But at the end of the day, like as any business you are what sets your business apart.

Gresham Harkless 8:43

Absolutely. As touched on, I think it's so important to be able and I'm happy this time and age that we have so many ways that we can tell our story and talk about what led us to get started and why we're doing what we're doing. Because as we touched on before it empowers and reminds other people that they can do the exact same thing and not have to do it in some cookie-cutter way. They can be true to themselves in their own secret sauce, as you said.

Melissa Lin 9:06

100% Yeah. It's so possible for anybody that might not feel like it at the moment, but it's possible for you. We are creating evidence for you right now that you can do it.

Gresham Harkless 9:16

Absolutely. I love how you peel back the onion as well too and talk about how sometimes on the outside, I think things can look like they're perfect, then sometimes we have things that we're frustrated about internally that we want to try to fix and we change and not being guilty about wanting to make those changes is absolutely huge. So I definitely appreciate that you for telling that about your story as well too, because I think we all have things and people telling us we need to accept that, we need to like that, it's okay, don't complain, and so on and so forth, but if you have a mission and a goal, you want to go after.

Melissa Lin 9:50

Yeah, I'll make a quick note about my parents. You can imagine my parents when I told them when I was leaving my nine-to-five after they just pushed me and pushed me for engineering. I actually didn't tell them that I left my nine-to-five, it took me two months to grow the confidence to tell them that I finally love my job.

Gresham Harkless 10:10

No, I definitely know that as well. I too, when I left my nine to five as well, it was not a very joyous conversation. But I think that at the end of the day, you have to make sure that you have to be true to yourself. I think that's one of the things I always try to say to remind people of love as well, too. It definitely sounds like you march to the same beat where you have to put your oxygen mask on to make sure that you're happy and fulfilled so that you can do everything you want to do in this world.

Melissa Lin 10:34

Yeah, 100%. I love my parents so much. Love you, Mom. Love you, dad. But like you guys, they aren't living the life I want to live. Actually my mom's left, but my dad hasn't traveled outside of North America. Like my dad is just a nine-to-five living day-to-day. Love you dad, but just not living the lifestyle I want, so I'm not going to be taking your advice.

When it comes to my business and finances and all of these things, you got to find someone who is living that lifestyle, and who has the relationships you want and all of those things.

Gresham Harkless 11:05

Yeah, absolutely. I think that there's a lot to be said about it, I usually say if you run your own race, you can't lose. I think that it takes time to figure out what our race is. I think we have those who love us, like our parents and our family members and friends, and so on and so forth, who love us and want us not to fail and want us to succeed. But we also have to balance that between having those love people in the corner and running our own race, which is difficult at times.

Melissa Lin 11:32

I love that yeah.

Gresham Harkless 11:33

Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So it could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Melissa Lin 11:43

Okay, I'm gonna give a few cuz it's just impossible to give just one. Okay, so my favorite tool I use every day is my business, I think a lot of people are catching on to this asana. It is a personal business management tool, that my team and I use, I highly recommend it, it's my to-do list, we plan our launch threats, absolutely amazing and we can communicate through it.

Another tool I love is Thrive cart, which is a payment processor because it just helps create a very seamless experience for the customer journey as they go through the payments processing portion of the business.

Then two favorite books, I always send the girls that sign on to work with me these two books right away, the Go-Giver by co-authors, Bob Berg and John David Mann and then the compound effect by Darren Hardy. Those two books were very big as I started my business and eventually left my nine-to-five very big and dear to my heart.

Gresham Harkless 12:36

So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So that could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you tell your younger business self and to sell for maybe even a new client as well, too.

Melissa Lin 12:46

Yes, okay. Again, oh, it's so hard for just one. So don't twist me for this, I'm gonna give you two. So the first one I really want to say is just show up every single day like show up for your clients, show up for your audience, show up for your family, your relationships, your friends, it's so important to just be showing up all of the time. Like leaders, show up every day, like we're leaders, if you're in this industry, you're wanting to make an impact and really change things. So show up every day.

The second one is just keep going. So many of us look for that instant gratification or businesses and if we don't see it, we give up, we walk away. If someone doesn't buy a product today, if someone says no to our coaching program, we feel that our entire business is going up in flames when in reality it isn't. So think back to the absolute worst moment you felt in your business. I know I've had some pretty bad ones. Did you get through it? Of course, you did. Keep going, give it another six months, like things are working, things are working things are working.

Gresham Harkless 13:49

Awesome. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote and quote, CEOs on this show. So Melissa, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Melissa Lin 13:59

Yes, this is such a great question. I love that you're asking this. So as the CEO, oh, I mean, there's so much responsibility, like you're creating the culture of your team, you're giving your clients an experience of a lifetime. You're having to hire, you're having to fire, managing so many things. But I truly believe that a CEO is a CEO, someone who embodies a few things like giving you that expectation, and constantly focusing outward, right? Being such a great leader, helping create other leaders within your company, like inspiring others to live into their greater visions and really inspiring them to be more and do more.

Taking radical responsibility for your actions 100%. You're running a company, and really just leading with honesty, integrity, and working from a place of love, not from a place of fear. I think all of those together are gonna really help amplify you as a CEO. I truly believe in all of those things. I try and embody those every single day.

So I would say that is my definition of a CEO.

Gresham Harkless 14:58

Awesome. Well, Melissa I truly appreciate that definition and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you can let our readers and listeners know. Then of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out all the awesome things you're working on.

Melissa Lin 15:11

Yes, of course, thank you again, for having me. It's been so wonderful. My last little additional nugget is if you haven't started your business, you've been wanting to start today, start today, no more waiting. It's gonna feel scary, you get a jump anyway, like we're here with you. If you're in business, and you feel like giving up, keep going, just keep going. Don't give up, show up. Those are the biggest things that have really helped get me to where I am today.

Like, it sounds so basic, but we have to remind ourselves of those things pretty often. If you want to get a hold of me, I'm all over Instagram. My handle is the_melissalin so you can reach me there. My website is themelissalin.com. I try and keep it nice and simple for you.

Gresham Harkless 15:55

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Melissa. I truly appreciate that to keep it even simpler if that's a word. We'll put the links and information in the show notes as well too. I definitely appreciate that final reminder of being able to start today and starting doesn't necessarily have to mean building a million-dollar business. It could just be researching what you're going to do. So we start where we are and we try to continue and show up every day as you said so eloquently.

So definitely appreciate that, appreciate you even more. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Outro 16:21

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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