Michele Lee Malo With MIchele Lee Malo Consulting

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Coach the Coach radio brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to brxambassador.com To learn more. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show. We have Michelle Lee Melo with Michelle Lee Melo Consulting. Welcome.

Michele Lee Malo: [00:00:43] Hi, thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about your practice. How are you serving, folks?

Michele Lee Malo: [00:00:49] The best way that I know how and that’s trying to uplift folks as careers through personal branding. But if folks don’t want to go back to work, what we definitely help them do is start their own business.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:02] So now what’s the vibe out there? Are people really resigning at the rate you’re are you finding that to be the case as well as with everything you’re hearing about in the media?

Michele Lee Malo: [00:01:12] Yeah, there’s there’s a lot of things that have happened. First and foremost, a lot of people’s rugs got pulled out from under them. So where so there was no choice. So a lot of them are saying, You know what? This is the perfect time for me to follow my dream. It started and start that career I was looking at doing or that business or completely change what they were doing. So if they were marketing folks, I’m seeing people going into training or into accounting just completely 180 ing everything that they were doing. But but yeah, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of movement in the industries right now.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:46] Now what’s your back story? How did you get involved in this line of work?

Michele Lee Malo: [00:01:50] Well, I was in corporate fortune five hundred for a little bit over 20 years and you know, the crafts and catalogs of the world doing brand management and just leading the hospitality divisions for the for the marketing. And I did that so long and I was on so many airplanes and I loved it. But as fate would have it, I was probably the sickest 28 year old you’ll ever meet. I was over three hundred and ten pounds pre-diabetic, high blood pressure. All of that, and I decided to turn my life around and lost one hundred and seventy pounds. And what I was finding, though, is that that was slowly starting to creep back up with the lifestyle that I was leading. And I thought I could have a bigger impact actually going out on my own and helping other people get their lives back on track because everything is intertwined. Because if your health or your finances, your career or any of your relationships, if any of that’s off kilter, more than likely it’s affecting all of that. So that’s why I decided you’ll let me see if I could really do something on my own and and really make a difference in other people’s lives.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:00] And then you’re still kind of using the maybe umbrella of branding and you’re still singing about from a branding standpoint, just showing an individual how they can leverage maybe this tool that enterprise level people talk about and think about all the time, but they can use it themselves individually?

Michele Lee Malo: [00:03:18] Yes, absolutely. I mean, basically what it is, it’s more of a process in order for folks to really start to think of themselves as the product versus what they’re doing because people buy things from those they know, like and trust. So if we can establish yourself on social media and when you go on radio shows or podcasts or any of those sort of things to be very consistent in their messaging and how they show up in the world, and I show them how to do that. And if that means starting a business, it’s also doing the whole strategy and marketing behind that and getting that infrastructure going so that what shows up and who that business is serving really likes, knows and trusts the person behind the curtain.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:03] And that’s one of those things where a lot of branding is that kind of being congruent and authentic in that what you’re saying, it all matches up right where people aren’t saying one thing, doing another, or they’re saying they’re, you know, super elegant and high class, and then they don’t visually show that.

Michele Lee Malo: [00:04:23] That’s exactly right. Whenever I’m working with my folks who are looking to do a career change or to make a change within that area, I always said we want to make sure that the resume you’re LinkedIn and how you show up in an interview, there’s no gaps. It all makes sense because you’ve always I don’t know about you, but I have met folks and you read about them or you follow them on LinkedIn or other platforms, and then they show up and you’re like, Wow, that just something doesn’t match and it and it feels off. You’ll never get the job and you’ll never get the sale. So we have to make sure you’re absolutely consistent across every way you show up. Like I said in the world.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:05] Now you mentioned earlier that you lost a lot of weight. Was that exercise of that to the actions you had to take to make that kind of a drastic change? Are those some of those lessons transferable to business as well?

Michele Lee Malo: [00:05:20] It absolutely is, because I tell everyone jokingly that I probably lost and found a thousand pounds in my life so far because whatever triggers you and that mindset, because mindset is everything and whatever you do. And once things start going wrong or there’s certain triggers in your life, it’s you start to fall back into bad habits. So while I was very successful on the health piece of that was and why people gravitated towards me is because I understood there was an empathy there to really start to look at, OK, we can look at the diet, we can look at exercise, but what else is going on there that’s throwing everything else off? Because maybe that’s another area that we need to really talk about before we make any significant changes so we don’t go back to the bad habits.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:10] And it’s one of those things where when you’re going on a journey like you were going on, it’s you’ve got to kind of work at every day and then a bad day can turn into a bad week and a bad week can be a bad month. And that’s the same in business. Sometimes you lose track of those daily activities you have to do every day, and then a bad day turns into a bad week, a bad month. And then all of a sudden you don’t have a business anymore, you don’t have any more clients. So to me, there’s a lot of similarity when you when you’re doing any type of kind of having an achievement that of that magnitude.

Michele Lee Malo: [00:06:42] Absolutely. And I think you have to also give yourself space with grace because things do happen. But to your point, you need to get back at it. So writing goals, personal goals for the day, for the week, you know, and have those go out and really start to look at them constantly and have gratitude when you start to make progress forward. Because I see a lot of things in the industry where you’ve got to hustle, you’ve got to push, you’ve got to do that. I 100 percent agree. But the hustle has to be strategic. It can’t just be busy so that you’re actually doing things that matter, that you see a pound off at the scale you. You launch the next phase of your business. Or you put that product even further into the go to market strategy or you’re finishing up that resume and making calls to to get interviews. So making small, very strategic and focused action is what really needs to happen, to keep you to keep you always moving forward. And I think happy also because accomplishing things and at least for myself, checking things off the list and saying, Hey, I’m in a better place today than I was yesterday, is everything right?

Lee Kantor: [00:07:54] And like you said, it doesn’t have to be super big wins every day. You know, moving the ball an inch is still moving the ball.

Michele Lee Malo: [00:08:01] That’s it. And speaking as a as someone who tries to run half marathons and marathons, I say I’m running because that’s very loose of what I do, but it’s it’s getting to the start line. And just as one foot in front of the other and then just seeing it all the way through to the finish, and it doesn’t matter how long it takes you to get there and remember that.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:23] And and I think that this is the value of coaches and consultants in this process is that they become an accountability partner. They become a sherpa guide to kind of light the way and show you what you could do and maybe push you to aim a little higher.

Michele Lee Malo: [00:08:39] Yeah, absolutely. And the accountability also comes in helping with the time management piece of things. So setting goals in terms of OK, by this date, you know, we will have you know this done because it’s a critical milestone just to keep the process moving forward and then if there’s a problem. You could you can address it first to your point, earlier, it’s OK, it becomes a week, it’s the month because you don’t know how to deal with some kind of blockage or or a problem in a certain area with the coach, you can kind of work through that. So you don’t just kind of push that aside or procrastinate. And then, like you said, nothing’s getting getting accomplished. So coaches are definitely a way to get things done. I always say I never do yell at folks like, Oh my goodness, you don’t know me at all. Not at all. But I will be very assertive and question every day. What are your goals? What did we set out to do? And I don’t want you to let yourself down.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:38] Now what is kind of an engagement look like for you? Is it one on one? Coaching is a group. Coaching is a mastermind group. Like, how do you work with your clients?

Michele Lee Malo: [00:09:46] Absolutely. Right now, especially with COVID, it’s been one on one. I had to do pivoting. I had pivoting. I had to pivot on that because I was doing a lot of public speaking, speaking at with workshops and things like that. I am a certified mastermind instructor, but I didn’t do that on Zoom and I will look to probably relaunch that coming up here. But right now, it’s definitely one on one. I’ve got a couple of clients working with that are in the process of launching some pretty big ideas and still working with all my my career folks. So that’s that’s where we’re at right now, but we’ll see what the future holds with everything that’s going on.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:27] Now what is kind of the pain that they’re having, where you’re the ideal fit when in terms of choosing a coach?

Michele Lee Malo: [00:10:35] Basically, the they the pain I’m trying to solve is that they know that they’re not alone. And what makes me very unique is that I have a very wide network because of a lot of different experiences and different industries and platforms and things like that. So when they are stuck and they don’t know how to do it. As an example, one of my clients currently, she has invented this brilliant idea and. She just came to me and said, I don’t know how to do it, I’m the inventor, but I have no business background. And so I give them the reassurance and they trust me to take a look at their whole goal and what it is. They’re bringing in their target market to give them peace of mind, that the gaps in their knowledge I’m able to fill for them so we can get their product to market and get them making some money pretty quick.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:31] So now. But could it be also like an executive that is, you know, maybe in a leadership role? Can you help that person as well that maybe they’re thinking, Hey, maybe I want to have I see the writing on the wall here? Maybe I need a second act?

Michele Lee Malo: [00:11:46] Yeah, actually, absolutely. Quite a few clients that come from the executive ranks because again, once you get to the VP roles, even senior directors and all of that because I was one of those folks and I did get a coach myself when I was trying to figure out how do I leave? Do I stay with what I’m doing because I was very successful at it? And that’s actually something I really love doing because we get into my intake form and kind of my process is to understand the life that they want to live, not the career not defined by their family or anything else like that, but really digging down to see what does life look like. Because once we understand what they’re trying to achieve on a personal level, then we’re able to peel back the onion layers and start making a strategy and branding and a plan for them to get to the next level based on their goals for their life.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:42] Now what’s been the most rewarding client you’ve worked with? What what story have you helped? Do you mind sharing a story where you’ve helped someone get to a new level?

Michele Lee Malo: [00:12:53] Oh, absolutely. This is one of my absolute favorites. She came to me. She was a single momma from Chicago and had met me at a conference, honestly two years ago. So I tell everybody, you never know who you’ve affected. It might be a phone call the next day or two years from that day, but when they need you and if you’ve made an impression, they will get in contact with you. And she was like, I said, a single mom and working for her kiddos. But in her heart, she’s always been a musician. And she wanted to start doing as her kids, her kiddos were getting close to college and all of that to start moving towards that career. And but she was unmotivated, she didn’t know how to do it. She was struggling with depression. And, you know, we just made a plan for her to start getting out there, how we can get her to do little things every day. So she’s always practicing because she was a bass player and an a vocalist. And fast forward, she now is the voice of Wal-Mart. And she also scored on last season’s The Voice. She was in the top 10. Wow. Now she’s and now she’s even doing television, she’s got a couple of different roles that she’s walking onto. So I went from she went from someone who’s very, very strong but was very, very tired to. Realizing her absolute dream and goals, and honestly, I felt like a proud mama just to see her do that because when she called me and said she did thing, she was like, I did a thing like, What did you do? She goes, I tried out for the voice and she had done American Idol way back. But it was a bad experience and I said, I’m proud of you. She’s like, Well, we’ll see. It’s time. And it’s her time. Well, I’ll probably be just a little piece of that.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:47] That’s an amazing story. I mean, you see the on that show, especially the back story of a lot of those folks are just this is kind of their last swing at a dream. And then when it comes true, it’s just amazing.

Michele Lee Malo: [00:15:00] Yeah, it’s it’s so and to see the pride in her and she’s also like a fashion icon. And I just it was everything we had talked about. And now this is five years in the making. You know, so on and off and for her to follow things, but you got to stay with it. I think that’s the moral of the story is never give up on that dream. You don’t have to be twenty two to become a musician. You can have life happen. And it still can come true, and that’s with anything you do, so that’s why having people in your corner to be your cheerleader, also when you’re down and say, OK, let’s give OK, let’s get back up what’s going on and giving them small tasks to just keep them on the road towards what they’re truly, truly wanting to do and having them win in life.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:48] Well, congratulations on all the success. If somebody wants to learn more or maybe get on your calendar or, you know, schedule a call. What is the best way to do that?

Michele Lee Malo: [00:15:59] Sure. You can look up the mindset menu if you want to sign up to have a call with me, or you can reach out to me on any of the social media platforms at Michelle Lee Malvo. Those are all my handles. I’m in one. Michelle, so make sure you get that. But that’s the best way to get a hold of me. Like I said, reach out on social or go ahead and schedule a calendar event with me through the mindset menu.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:27] Well, thank you again for sharing your story. Today you’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Michele Lee Malo: [00:16:32] Oh, I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:36] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Coach the Coach radio.