Boost Your Success in 2024: My Best Advice on Business, Time Management, and Reinvention

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Pick one thing to master each year, and study it before you act

  In a live Q&A in Oklahoma City, Mel says 'if everything is important, nothing is.' She describes her career as 'leapfrogging' between private skill-building and public moves. She was for years one of the most booked female speakers on the corporate circuit, which is where she built her expertise. About six or seven years ago she focused on social media strategy, studying Gary Vaynerchuk, Upworthy and Ellen's YouTube. Then came two years studying podcasts like Jay Shetty's, Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy, and Howard Stern. Her current focus at the time was YouTube.

• 02

  Cut the news and curate your feeds to protect your energy

  Mel cites Harvard happiness researcher Shawn Achor's finding that a minute of negative news in the morning can affect your mood for six to eight hours. For a business owner, time, attention and energy are the scarcest resources, and what you take in shapes what you put out. She skips the news, assuming she'll hear anything important. She unfollows accounts that don't lift her up, or mutes them if unfollowing would cause friction, like with a relative.

• 03

  Treat a slump as a research project using process, product and people

  Asked whether to close, pivot or push through slow sales, Mel suggests stepping back from emotion and examining three things. Process: systems and, for e-commerce, marketing such as photos, keywords, campaigns and integrations. Product: has it gone stale or run its trend? People: wrong or too many hires, a sister still running social media, or you, if you've lost your 'why.'

• 04

  'Business procrastination' is stress relief

  Doing dishes, email, yoga or Pinterest instead of the hard work of growing your business is avoidance. Mel notes research linking procrastination to stress: putting off hard things gives short-term relief. Noticing it is the first step. Then make the work easier by changing where you do it. Ambient coffee-shop noise helps her focus, and her single best workspace is an airplane seat, where she's strapped in with bad Wi-Fi.

• 05

  Your day has five zones of time

  Zone 1 is from waking until you check your phone, email or TV, and it's the only time that's truly yours. Zone 2 starts once you hand your attention to someone else. Zone 3 is the workday, time you've traded for money, so don't resent it. Zone 4 starts around 3 p.m., a foggy stretch through dinner. Zone 5 begins when the TV goes off at night, and is best spent on sleep so you can use Zone 1 well. Focusing on Zones 1 and 5 made Mel more productive, less stressed and less resentful.

• 06

  Confidence is the willingness to try

  Mel says research shows the feeling of confidence comes from competence, which comes only from practice. So the confident act is trying before you feel ready. Impostor syndrome just means you're crossing a bridge, sometimes a long fog-covered one like the Golden Gate. And 'I don't know, but I can find out' is the most confident thing you can say in a meeting.

• 07

  Skip PR; join communities; be careful with partners

  Mel calls hiring PR a waste of money, since your customers and your own social media are your best PR. Mentors can fade, leaving you chasing them. Peer entrepreneur communities propelled her most, because family and friends don't understand what running a business is like. She advises treating competitors as allies to learn from. For existing businesses, she warns against handing equity to a partner out of overwhelm. Hire expertise, and partner material will reveal itself. She had a partner who was 'fantastic and then… really horrible.'

• 08

  Make a calculated decision, not a leap of faith

  Before going full-time, look at cash flow, know your budget, cut spending to extend your runway, and decide how much risk you can tolerate. Leaping too soon puts financial pressure on the business and on you. Mel cites a University of Wisconsin–Madison study finding entrepreneurs who kept their day jobs at first were 33% less likely to fail. She also quotes Adam Grant: quitting your job to start a company is 'like proposing marriage on the first date.'

• 09

  Self-care is a business strategy

  Mel cites UCLA researcher Dr. Judy Willis on how a chronically stressed nervous system impairs the prefrontal cortex, affecting processing speed, working memory, clarity and strategic decisions. Mel says she ran 100-hour weeks from 2014 and called it success until reading this during the pandemic. She argues hustle culture doesn't work for most people with families, and that best ideas come away from work, like on a walk without earbuds or in the bath.

• 10

  Self-doubt is the biggest obstacle, and the 'just' in 'Just Do It' captures it

  Fear always shows up when you try something new, whether a product line, pricing model or hire. Mel says the key word in Nike's slogan is 'just', which acknowledges the moment of hesitation every athlete and decision-maker feels. Expect it, then count 5-4-3-2-1 and act.