Ever felt the rush of a Eureka moment that rewired your entire career path? That’s the spark igniting today’s chat with Michelle Nedelec, an entrepreneurial alchemist who turns the base metals of budding businesses into gold. She takes us on a whirlwind tour of her origin story, from an ambitious plan involving dental dreams and global escapades, to the serendipitous pivot that led her into the realm of financial services and beyond. The tale is a masterclass in adaptability and seizing the right opportunities—even when they’re not the ones you were originally gunning for.
Michelle’s advice intertwines strategy, systems, support, and the pivotal state of mind. She covers marketing mishaps and the epiphanies that arise from them, like finding that one winning product that can launch your venture into the stratosphere. Michelle’s infectious laughter peppers our journey as we scrutinize Apple’s playbook, navigate the nuances of niche markets, and sail through the choppy waters of operational integration—all while keeping an eye on the prize of strategic growth and the dream exit.
Remember it’s not just about the destination but the greatness we harness along the way. Michelle leaves you with pearls of wisdom on tailor-made solutions for diverse entrepreneurial challenges, ensuring no listener walks away empty-handed. So, while you’re plotting your next business move or dreaming up a venture that could change your life, take a leaf out of Michelle’s book—and don’t forget, the journey to success is always worth the ride.
Key highlights:
- Entrepreneurial Journey in Electronic Retail
- Financial Services Career Transformation
- Value of Problem Solving in Business
- Phases of Small Business Growth
- Navigating Business Direction for Growth
Connect with Michelle Nedelec:
- Website: michellenedelec.com
- Company website: awarenessstrategies.com
- LinkedIn: Michelle Nedelec
Check out the video version of this episode below:
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Episode transcript below:
00:00 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Hi everyone, mike Malatesta here and welcome back to the how it Happened podcast. On this podcast, I dig in deep with every guest to explore the roots of their success, to discover not just how it happened but why it matters. My mission is to find and share stories that inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you. You know I’ve had guests answer the how it Happened question before by saying it happened when they were born. But my guest today, well, she’s the first person to say it began at her conception in the summer of 1969, specifically. So that gives you some idea of what you’re in for with my conversation today with guest Michelle Nettalek. We laugh a lot. She tells some great stories and when we do get serious and we do we learn about the power of 10Xing your business and how she helps entrepreneurs and founders understand that power and make it happen.
00:55 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
If somebody’s in the startup phase, being able to bring them from 100,000 to a million, we have to look at what is that one product that’s working? So they have to have some longevity. Usually it’s about three years not necessarily, but usually and then we can go in and look at how do we make this one thing fit that Venn diagram and then kind of exploit the merits of it so that we can bring that to market faster, easier, better. And then, once we’ve done that, then how do we scale that? And with that, that trajectory, it becomes predictable to say okay, yes, we’re going to hit a million, yes, we’re going to hit 10 million.
01:32 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
This episode is sponsored by the Dream Exit. The Dream Exit is a private, bespoke program for successful entrepreneurs with annual revenue between 5 million and 100 million who realize that they have one chance to get their Dream Exit right and that the odds of realizing that dream by themselves, all alone or at the last minute are stacked against them. In less than 90 days, we teach you how to design, build and execute a customized Dream Exit playbook that gets your business ready for sale at its maximum value and gets you ready to maximize your meaning and purpose in your post exit life, even if today you are not ready to sell. You see, dream Exits just don’t happen. They are the result of early, professional and proven planning. So if you’re an entrepreneur with annual sales between 5 and 100 million and you want to learn how to 10X to 100X your chances of achieving the Dream Exit you deserve, go to dreamexitplaybookcom today. You’re in for a treat today, and here’s Michelle. Hello, michelle, welcome to the how to Depth and Podcast.
02:47 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
Hello Mike, I’m super excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
02:50 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
As am I. I had the pleasure of being on your show earlier, maybe this month. It was a fantastic experience. Michelle Nettleck, mike Malatesta, the business ownership podcast you have a lot of podcasts, but that’s the one I was on. I do, but that is the one you were on. Okay, she just wanted to be short, so I give you a taste of Michelle in the intro, but I’m going to give you a little bit more. Now I’m going to read her formal bio. Formal bio. I like that. I’m going to read her formal bio.
03:19
I’m going to read her formal one, now International bestselling author. Her book is business ownership mindset. Michelle Nettleck is an expert in entrepreneurialism and the founder of awareness strategies. She has run her own series of companies since 1995. Congratulations. And since 2003, she’s been helping sales reps, entrepreneurs and executives to continually double their profits and revenues. She not only has what it takes to help her clients build a million-dollar business, but she does it time and time again and we’re going to learn how, I hope.
03:59
Michelle particularly loves to talk about marketing automation, systems, integration and support, both on and off the stage. She teaches the key components of scaling a business strategy systems, support and state of mind. So you know how to continually elevate all four components to build a healthy, thriving business. Since 2016, she’s been focusing on helping entrepreneurs bring their businesses online, from conceptualization to done for you IT automation. She’ll have also happened to have a great sense of humor, which she does, and a love for stilettos, which I didn’t know about until I got the formal bio. But that leads me to Michelle’s Just for Fun bio, which I’m going to share.
04:44 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
I was going to say, if I mentioned stilettos and a formal bio, what the heck do I have?
04:48 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, exactly Right. So from there, here’s where we go. Michelle Nettolak is a sassy, landlocked lassie with an Irish sense of humor and a French innuendo for everything. She’s quick-witted, quick to make a decision and loves a long goodbye. If you want to talk dirty to her, careful now it’ll have to include business strategy, product development and a touch of sarcasm, or at least peppered with dry humor or a pinch of existentialism. She loves a good challenge, ticking items off her bucket list and a worthy idea. You can learn more about Michelle at awarenessstrategiescom and, of course, her own website. That’s her company website. This is her own website. Michelle Nettolak M-I-C-H-E-L-L-E-N-E-D-E-L-E-Ccom. Michelle, I start my podcast with a simple question, and that is how did it happen for you?
05:48 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
That, my friend, is a long-winded potential answer. I could go on for days on that, which is why I was teasing going hey, do you want to be able to just go for coffee and leave me alone? This?
06:00 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
is just I’ve left and this is just a picture of me sitting here looking interested Exactly Just freeze frame it.
06:06 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
We’ll repeat the video every 10 seconds. Oh, how did it happen? I don’t know. I always tease that. The way it started, at least, was during summer holidays on the summer of 69, and my parents got together. That pretty much explains everything about me. Oh, and it happened during Stampede Week this is the pre-how that happened story Okay. You want a couple of innuendos. There you go.
06:30 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
The lettos involved in that one as well.
06:33 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
I think my mom ever wore stilettos. I don’t think she needed to.
06:35 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
But my dad’s definitely French.
06:37 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
so All right, you know. And they had five kids and I was an accident. They thought they were done.
06:41 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
You were the last. Okay, got it. Summer of 69. And the last one.
06:46 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
That also explains a lot. So, yeah, how did it happen? I’m going to assume that we’re going to start with the end in mind. And how did I get to this crazy place of helping business owners to? What I like to do is at least get them to a million or to 10X of business. So, even if they’re out a million, to take them out to 10 million. And ironically, most people are going like, oh, you can’t do that, you can’t do that. I’m like, actually, it’s easier to go from a million to 10 million, just to go from 500,000 to a million, and we can talk about all those fun ways. How that all transpired was when I started working.
07:24
When I started in business when I was 25, I was in Inuvik in the Northwest Territories, which is about that far from Santa Claus, and I started out one, but three businesses. I don’t recommend any of that to anyone. To not start three businesses in the middle of nowhere when you’ve never had a business before All terrible ideas. But it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot of things. So one of them was tanning salon. The phones were ringing off the hook and it was mostly because they wanted to tan their hides, not their wives. So I learned then that marketing was a little off and the importance of good marketing.
08:04 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
You were getting all the hunter calls. I got you, so one of the business. It took me a while to figure that out, I was like they were tanning their butts. What is it? Oh, oh, oh, okay, now I got it. Now I got it.
08:18 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
I tease everybody from Southern California. It’s like, oh, go talk to your Midwestern friends, they’ll explain the whole thing. They’ll tell you what you really need to know and what you don’t.
08:28
So we did that at an electronics store and with the electronics store we had to. We got a loan for that. So we had a coach that was attached to that and that was fantastic, because I learned a ton about everything, and one that struck me the most at that time was doing the futures and the projections. And to me at that time it was like okay, so you just want me to make stuff up. It’s kind of like okay, michelle, yes, forgive me, you have a million dollar loan and yes, we want you to make stuff.
08:59 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
But the stuff that we like, but the stuff that we like.
09:02 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
That’s what it was. It was just me making shit up and going can I do this? I don’t know. I think I can do this. I’m smart, I know how to sell a phone, I can sell a record player Like how hard could this be?
09:16
And it was an eye-opener. But it also set a foundation for me of the entrepreneurial journey and it was just so much fun and there was so much to learn and it was never changing. And even though I was in particular business opening three of them out once, they all had their own challenges and their own strategies and their own things. And it was kind of funny because my partner at the time goes well, you’re really smart, why don’t you set up a website? And you could have a whole bunch of these. And he basically came up with the idea of Airbnb back in 1993 with zero clue how to set up a website. And of course I wasn’t. Well, I might have been smart enough to do it, but I wasn’t insightful enough to go and figure it out, which is rather unfortunate because we could have actually In retrospect it’s like I have no clue.
10:05
I’m set up a website. What are you talking about? At that time was kind of like if you said to somebody today well you know, just go put up a space station.
10:15 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
What was your third business? She mentioned two.
10:17 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
Third business was so we had the electronic store, we had a bed and breakfast and a tanning salon.
10:22 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Okay, which one lasted the longest, or which one started first? Which one lasted the longest?
10:26 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
They all terminated at the same time that I said I’m out of here, unfortunately. So I was a little young and a little naive, 25. I went up there initially. It’s a very convoluted story. I went up there to become a dentist sort of. So I was a dental, so I don’t. My life is a series of. Have you ever played Domino’s and you set up an entire room and it’s like God had set up this fantastically intricate game of Domino’s? This is one thing when the whole thing goes. So I don’t really know where to start in these whole stories.
11:08
But once upon a time I fell in love in university and broke up, went my own way, came back, fell in love again, decided I needed to graduate same time he did. So I came up with a course that I could take in order to finish the same time. He did live in the middle of nowhere because my boyfriend at that time was a park ranger. So I came up with two ideas. One was aviation metallurgy and the other one was dental assisting. Of course, there’s no airports in the middle of nowhere where you would have a park ranger working, so I decided to go with dental assisting. I did that for about half a second and realized I’d rather be the dentist than the dental assistant. And of course we broke up. So then I go on this convoluted plan of, okay, how do I become a dentist? And on this journey I actually found a maxillofacial surgeon so the ones that do surgery on your bones and your jaw and was fascinated with him and went yes, this is the thing, this is what I want to do. But I didn’t want to go to university. For you, that’s boring. So I figured out this plan that well, in Canada you can become a dentist by challenging the exam. Obviously, if you’re a dentist somewhere else, like you, just challenge the exam and go, do I qualify as Canadian dentist? If you do, you’re a dentist. It’s great.
12:29
Not all countries have a seven-year degree like the States and Canada. Some of them are a little more loose, let’s say that. So I came up with this whole convoluted plan that if I went to did you do as a dental assistant, I could go to the Northwest Territory and become a dental assistant for two years. If I did it down south, it would have to be five years. That was too long for me. I figured I could handle two years in the Northwest Territories.
12:57
Once I did that, I could go to the King Fahad Hospital in Saudi Arabia and practice for two years and they would pay me $50,000 US per year and pay for all my expenses because I’d live in a US Army barracks and so that would save me up $100,000. So that I could go and practice chair side assistants in Columbia with dentists. And they had a program at that time with Red Cross that the dentists would actually teach the assistants how to do the job, because there’s such a high need for dental work but they didn’t have the people to do it, so the dentists would voluntarily teach the assistants how to do the dental work, do that for three years and then I could come back to Canada and challenge exam. The reason I needed the $100,000 was because at that time guerrilla warfare could have broke out in Columbia at any time and it cost $100,000 US to be able to chart or plane to get that heck out of dodge. So I needed to.
13:58
So I had this huge, convoluted plan. I’m like, yes, I got it all set up Like I the Red Cross knows I’m coming in four years, king Fahad Hospital knows I’m coming in. Two arranged to get a job at the clinic in Newark. So I did all of this stuff, but went up there, trauma hit, I got pregnant and went oh well, I guess I’m not going to Saudi Arabia. So stank oh mom, that’s not going to happen. So then the plans all changed. That’s how I ended up going into business with my partner and then becoming enthralled with this whole entrepreneurial journey going. This is awesome. This can keep me entertained for a lifetime.
14:36 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Okay.
14:36 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
So there you go.
14:37 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So, peeps, if you’re listening to this.
14:41 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
You got to see the look on my face right.
14:45 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
It’s amazing that that plan didn’t work. So I’m going to be here, then I’m going to go all the way over here then I’m going to go over to Columbia.
14:52 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
Right. What could possibly go wrong?
14:53 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
What could possibly go wrong? So how many kids do you have now?
14:58 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
Oh, just the one. He is a handful and he was all I could handle. Okay, that’s all that’s going to happen.
15:04 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Beautiful he’s fabulous. I love him, but okay, so you had these. Thank you for sharing that. I’m still wrapping my head around it. But the three businesses you got a bed and breakfast, you got an electronics store, you got a tanning salon for people and you do it for a couple of years. You do it for five years what?
15:21 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
Didn’t for two years, and so my goal as a dental assistant was to go out for two years. So as I was going through the trauma of what it was like to move to the Arctic Circle, it was like two years, two years. I can do this just for two years. It’s all I have to do is two years, and that was the mantra in my head.
15:38 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Okay, so two years to the day.
15:40 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
Okay, so two years to the day I ended up leaving and I looked back and I went oh, should I had a different mantra? Probably not. They should have been set in my mind.
15:51 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So you left and did you go. You went immediately into taking what you had learned from the coach in the electronics store and just sort of putting that together your own way, or was there a stop in between in some country somewhere to do something?
16:07 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
So when I broke up with my spouse. At that time I moved back to Calgary, where I was born and raised, and I went okay, time to reorganize. I got to figure out what’s going on here and a friend of mine approached me and said you know, come work with us. We do financial services and I think you’d be awesome at it. So okay, I’ll go and check it out. And, interestingly enough, at that time I didn’t know the difference between an interest rate and a rate of return. I just used them interchangeably and went like there’s no difference. I went oh, there’s a big difference actually, and if you want to make any money in life, you need to know the difference. So I embarked on at least the education of it. I went like clearly, I need to understand finance is better than I do. So I set the goal to do that for three months and ended up doing that for three years, maybe four. Ran, my own office had 15 people working for me. It was a thriving, bouncing office. It was awesome, it was so much fun. But I worked evenings and weekends in financial services. That’s what you do you meet your clients in the evenings and weekends, and by that time my son was starting school. So I went okay, I want to stop this, go get a nine to five and so they can be with him when he’s in school. So I signed the office over to my sister, who I had recruited years before, and she took it off. She’s still doing it and doing awesome.
17:32
And I went and got a job in with a company that at that time was keep in mind, this was like 2000, right, 1998, 1999, I guess they were what would become the very first. Well, they wouldn’t become so. They were working on licensed software, which is the same as we have today. We pay for license every month and you access whatever software you want on the cloud. That’s what they were working on then and it was unheard of then. At that time you bought software and, if you were lucky, you got a CD. You downloaded the CD and you got the software and you own the software. Nobody had licensed software where you would pay for a license and get access to it, except for this company was setting that up.
18:20
So I went to work for them. They discovered that I was too smart for my own good. So, being in the receptionist, I had jobs for marketing. I had jobs from IT. I took over the phone system. It basically took on all the jobs that nobody wanted and did that for two years and it was awesome in a lot of regards. And, of course, I got fired because I’m not an employee. So they had a merger and they said you can’t be fraternizing with the ex staff. And I wrote up a very nice diplomatic email that said something to the effect of if you have a way of treating people with respect and the generosity that they deserve while they’re in the reception area which people are watching, I might add I’m happy to do that, and I sat on that email and waited. Five minutes went. Do I want to send this? Do I really want to send this? You know you’re getting fired as soon as you send this. Right, yeah, send. Three seconds later my boss comes out of the office goes. Can you clock into the boardroom?
19:22 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Let me just tap my box, I’ll be right in there.
19:28 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
Yeah, that ended that little career, but that started me on a trajectory of IT and going okay, this IT thing actually is pretty cool and I should know more about it. Went into there. I worked with a company, a construction company, and was their receptionist and did the same thing, took on a little bit of this, little bit of that. I took on their internal IT systems and I took on their project management coordinator. So I worked for their project manager sort of, and coordinated all the utilities and things like that. When they would open up a site and said, like why do you do it this way? Why don’t you open up the ground, get all the utility guys in, get the phone companies in the water, everybody, while the conduits are open, they can lay there whatever, and then we close it and you don’t have to be ripping up the roads and stuff. So I ended up saving them a gazillion dollars on how they were doing their things and, needless to say, I had taken on too much, so they fired me too.
20:26
And then I went on to like I’ve had 28 pivots. We were talking about pivots were cool. I looked back and I went okay, so I had 28 distinct careers, not because I sucked at them, usually because I had mastered them and went this is so boring, I don’t want to do this anymore. And then I went on to something else, which then transitioned into working with businesses and looking at them and going okay, what do you really need to succeed in? Here you got.
20:57
You know, there’s a lot of energy going on in a lot of different directions. How do we hone in on the one thing that’s working and make you some serious cash now? And all of those pivots and directions and interests that I had have all helped me in being able to kind of take that stew, if you will, taking that plot of knowledge and wealth, bringing it to a company and going okay, here’s what you can do. Oh, do this, do this and you’ll succeed faster and easier. So it’s actually served me incredibly well to have this diversified knowledge and to be able to look at business as simply business and being able to pull out the strengths, the weaknesses and harness all that energy towards the finish line.
21:45 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And those two receptionists starting positions that you described, michelle. That see, I’m looking at that or I’m listening to you and I’m thinking, oh, so we hire someone and we think they’re going to be this because that’s what our expectation for this position is, and then they become she becomes really a person that it sounds like. It’s like I notice a problem. I think I can help fix or advance the solution towards that problem. So I’m just going to do it. I’m thinking to myself and you have to tell me where I’m going off the rails here, but I’m thinking to myself well, I would want that in my business, because I have too many people who are like oh yeah, I’ve known that’s been messed up for a long time, but it’s not my problem, that’s somebody else’s problem, and so you know they’re at space. So what happened? You know, help me square that up Absolutely Well.
22:46 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
in my experience, people are much more apt to listen to somebody that’s charging $15,000 than $15. That’s really all it is. When you pay a consultant to come in and look at the problem and go, yeah, this problem, fix this, do that and you’ll do it, it’s almost like if they don’t pay that kind of money, they’re not valuing that that is worth it, which at the time, you know, $15 an hour or $15,000.
23:15
It was kind of funny actually, because when I got fired from the construction company because they had hired an IT person to take over that job, I’m like, yeah, that’s awesome, that’s fantastic. And then they’re like no, to replace you. And I went, oh, ok, well, what are you going to do with the rest of the stuff I do? They’re like what other stuff? Oh well, you should probably know that, but you know not my position to tell you anymore. So I came in to collect my check and they’re like hey, do you know anything about this project? And I’m like, yeah, I know everything about that project. What would you like to know? And the new receptionist said I’m sure she’d be willing to come back on Clowntract if you want. That’s smart, yes, I would. They’re like yeah, no, we’re not going to do that. And I said, ok, great. I said I bet you you probably deleted all my email because you saw it as a threat. Right, he goes oh, yeah, yeah, we’ve deleted your email. Good, that’s where all the information was.
24:09 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
All right, you hear that OK. So now I have to ask 28. Twenty eight careers, pivots, calm, whatever you want to calm. In your bio it says you like long advice. This don’t sound like long advice, so what is what?
24:24 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
No, when it comes to the businesses, no when it comes to people I do. You know it’s funny is every job I’ve ever got fired from everybody I go, hey, I’ll meet you at the corner pub or whatever. So I go to the corner pub with my stuff and, you know, my cell phone. I’m already figuring out what I’m going to do next. And then the staff would come by and say goodbye and we’d have these huge parties after, and one of these parties actually lasted about five days.
24:53
Five days, five days, I think. I got fired on a Wednesday and the party didn’t stop till Sunday night. It was great.
24:59 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Oh, my gosh All right. So you said early on that it’s easier to go from one million to 10 million easier to 10 X than it is to go, say, from 100,000 to a million. That’s it. I tend to believe that as well. I am curious how you came to that and why you believe that and how you get other people to believe it, because that’s seems to me to be your secret sauce, maybe.
25:30 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
Well, when people are starting. So I have kind of discovered that they’re essentially what I consider four stages of business. There’s your startup phase, where you’re throwing the spaghetti up against the wall, trying to see what sticks, and it’s chaos and mayhem, fun, drama you name it.
25:46
It’s probably going on in a company like that.
25:49
The second phase is the growth phase in order to transition, or the growth phase is when you can take something that’s working, hone all of your energy towards it and get exponential growth from that, because now you’re taking all of your energy and putting it towards that one thing.
26:06
So, historically, an example of that is Apple. When Steve Jobs said, ok, all you guys were working on 57 projects, we’re going to work on one, we’re going to work on the iPod, that’s it. Because one thing was working and he took all of those engineers and put all of their energy towards that one thing. All of the marketing that was going towards 57 things is now going towards one and by taking the same resources that you have and being able to utilize it on one thing, obviously it creates exponential growth. But companies in the startup phase aren’t ready to get there yet until they’ve thrown spaghetti at the wall to see what the market likes, to see what’s working kind of conventionally, to see where there’s a response. Because there’s a Venn diagram in business that you want to be in the sweet spot what do you love to produce, what do you, what is your audience want and what has profitability?
27:06
So once something is in the middle of that Venn diagram. That’s your sweet spot. You know the thing to pick. The problem with the startup phase is when you throw in spaghetti against the wall or it looks like your business looks like a Pollock painting. You don’t really know where that is yet until you can step back at it and look and go, oh, there’s a whole consolidation of things going on over here. Let’s look at that. Then you can kind of hone in on that growth phase. Once you’ve got that growth phase focused on, now you’re looking at that thing, the iPod, and going, OK, how do we market this? Because I’ll give you a little story.
27:42
Once, when my son was literally goes, my, my, my one iPod. That’s awesome, honey. No idea what you’re talking about. He goes no, really, it’s a little black thing and it does this and plays music and I’m like it’s like Walkman. No, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Go, collect some information, bring it back and show me. So he goes in, does laptop, of course, at that time and goes to the website, prints it off and shows it to me and I go, oh, OK, this makes sense. So now at least I know what I’m looking for From Apple’s perspective. They needed to hone in on what their marketing was, so that it made sense not only to kids what that product was, but to their parents that were obviously going to move by it For them and supply them with them.
28:23
Now, to finish off the story before, we move on they said to my son that’s great, honey, I’m not buying you one, but you’ll get one. You know, stick to it and you know figure it out. You make it happen and he’s all dejected and wow. So that night I go to a networking event and at that time they had all the booths and the tables out and they had the little fish bowl with your business cards and you put them out and somebody was giving away a iPod. Wait for it.
28:50 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Yeah, ok, all right.
28:53 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
They stick my business card in the bowl and go. Clearly, you know we’ll see what happens. Of course, an hour later they draw the card and I win a iPod. So I go home with this thing. Clearly it’s his, not mine. I give it to him. He goes well, I thought you weren’t going to buy me one. I said I didn’t. And one one is clearly not mine because I don’t even know what it does. This is all yours. So one that was a lesson in his ability to manifest what he wanted, but in two, it was an ability for Apple to be able to articulate what that black little square was, because, like, I don’t know if you remember what iPods look like, but they seriously, like I could pick up anything.
29:31
Right yeah, like this happens to be a pencil sharpener, but it totally looked like an iPod, like it was a square plastic black thing that didn’t really look like anything. So your ability, their ability to be able to articulate what it was in the middle of the world, what it was and the magic that it could produce for people, had to be articulated, and they needed to get their teams to be able to do that in a way that everybody wanted one. Clearly, they succeeded. That then leads to so you have to massage your therapy after your messaging and marketing, getting that magic between your potential market and creating an allure around what it is that they that thing, so that they want it, they’re enticed by it, they can’t stop themselves from going to get one, which is very different than hey, do you want one of these? No, ok, we’re done.
30:23 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Right.
30:23 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
So they got that honed in on and they honed in on it very well. That then allowed them to go into what I call the scaling phase of business. Scaling phase of business is throwing money at the problem, right, you buy ads, you get, you buy markets, you buy audiences. You’re basically throwing money at the problem. And because your marketing is so good, because that allure is so finite that you can throw a dollar at the problem, you know you’re going to make two. Does that make sense? So that’s your scaling phase. And then, once you’re in the past your scaling phase then you can look at what do I need to do in order to be able to exit from this? So at that time, apple could have in theory said something like I want to sell this, the IP, to somebody like Sony. Sony had a long name, they had longevity, they had been around, they were a big company. At that point they could have sold it off to Sony for you know, a couple of hundred million dollars and been OK, that’s great, we’ll go do something else. Now they decided not to do that. I don’t know if that was ever on the table, and probably wasn’t, but for most businesses in the scaling phase, their next step is to either look at the exit phase, which means selling it to an enterprise that’s bigger than them, or to go on and do other things, and clearly Apple went on to do the phone and the laptops and all the things that they did.
31:46
Sure, but when you look at small business, right, you take Keats, plumbing, and look at how do I go? Am I in the startup phase? Am I throwing spaghetti against wall? Do I have a product that I know works and that people want and that I can hone in on, and and people are enticed by it and they want it, whether they know they do or not. And then, how do you get into that scale phase? How do I throw money at the problem and create ads so that I can do that? And then look at okay, what do I have to do in order to look appealing, in order to get enterprise to buy me out, if that’s what I wanted to do, or my staff, or whatever. So that’s what I do now is look at those four phases of business and how do we bring those to market and how do we make them exponential. So, if somebody’s in the startup phase at 100,000, keep in mind you can be in the startup phase at a million dollars too.
32:39
It just depends on the type of business and what’s going on and how they’re doing it. But if somebody’s in the startup phase, being able to bring them from 100,000 to a million, we have to look at what is that one product that’s working? So they have to have some longevity Usually it’s about three years, not necessarily, but usually or they have to have previous business experience to know what’s going to take them to get there. And then we can go in and look at, okay, how do we make this one thing fit that Venn diagram and then kind of exploit the merits of it so that we can bring that to market faster, easier, better. And then, once we’ve done that, then how do we scale that?
33:23
And with that kind of plan, that trajectory, it becomes predictable to say, okay, yes, we’re going to hit a million, yes, we’re going to hit 10 million. And that really all comes down to is that the business that the founder wants to create? Because a lot of people say, oh, I want to make a million dollar business and it’s like, okay, this is what it’s going to take. Oh, I don’t want staff.
33:47 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Then we got to back up the bus and go. Really, what do?
33:50 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
you really want you hear that, so often I don’t want anybody working for me.
33:55 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
I don’t want yeah. I want to be big but I don’t want to, I don’t want that big. So let me ask you about the growth stage again, because it seems like and again getting back to this 10x, the ability to 10x, which I think is something that’s a very appealing thought. It’s an appealing thought, maybe not an appealing execution all the time, but it’s definitely an appealing thought.
34:18 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
It’s got to be special kind of crazy, and if you’re a special kind of crazy, it is enticing, yeah. So how do?
34:23 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
you though so it seemed to me when I took away from the growth at the growth stage, you are at a point where you can at least begin the focus process, and the focus process is where you are going to have to be in order to put all your energy into what has the best likelihood of working and then scaling from there you talk about. You use the Apple example, which is a great one.
34:48
you know that they took 53 things or 57, whatever it was and they went down to one which is niching right, and I’ve seen you talk about niching also as something you have to be careful of, and I think this is where the Venn diagram comes in, because you talk about, like underwater basket weaving as a really niche thing. It’s so niche, in fact, that no one wants to buy underwater basket weaving. So there’s a. There’s a. I mean, it’s not a simple process to figure out how to go from the spaghetti sticking to the wall to which piece of spaghetti you should focus on right, plus entrepreneurs. Many just by nature, are like no, michelle, no, no, no, these are all important. Our customers love all of this stuff and if we give up one of these things, it’s going to and you know, you can just hear where that conversation goes. So how do you get people through that? Because it’s not natural for a lot.
35:48 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
Absolutely so. To give you an example, we had a client down in Florida and they did. They were basically a health retreat and they had been in business since 1964. So they were very much used to doing things in a certain way.
36:03
And we went. That is awesome, it’s fantastic. You have 180,000 past clients. Clearly you have successes Granted.
36:13
When we transition online, you have to solve a problem for a certain group of people, because they go on to Google and they go solve my problem for me. They don’t go, hey, what’s out in the world right now? And Google, intentionally, is telling you hey, would you like us to narrow down your, your, your views to what you’re interested in? And every time you say yes, that gets narrower and narrower and narrower, and it’s to me that’s a recipe for disaster in humanity, but we’ll skip that for now. What it does, though, is it it makes a business focus on what is the problem that your ideal client is trying to solve.
36:56
Now, in the case of a health clinic, it’s not necessarily that people are going, hey, I want the ultimate in health. Right, when have you ever gone online and say I want the ultimate in health? You don’t, because we all know it’s going to involve some form of, you’re going to have to eat differently and you’re probably going to have to exercise, and all of us are going, no, don’t want that. That’s not what I’m looking for, but we do look for things like I want to lose weight, I want to just make health, I want to eat healthier, I want to like whatever the thing is. So now we’ve got to hone in on it and what we did is decided that they had the recipe and at that time it was perfect timing for a weight loss program, so it was just one of the programs that they offered. They weren’t stopping all the rest of their things, but we were focusing all of the marketing and all of the direction. The sales team, the customer service, everybody was in on this weight loss program. So we put all our energies into that. We promoted it, we created a webinar for them where we talked to their past 180,000 clients, which they had never done before, never marketed their past clientele before and we said, hey, we have this new program. It’s super exciting, it’s fantastic and a three-week program. I myself lost 20 pounds, which I did, and we went through that transition of how that happened, what was going on, and, of course, the pictures were all fantastic beautiful pictures of Florida and the water and the hot trainers, all of the things that went into being able to do that and we built a million-dollar webinar. So in 90 minutes, we sold a million dollars on a webinar, which was fantastic, freaking awesome. Now, keep in mind, for them that was good money.
38:44
It wasn’t enough to keep them growing. We had to do it a couple of times, but it was proof in putting that, by taking the secret sauce that they had for what they did and being able to sell it online in a language that people were looking for, that the response was fantastic and, to some extent, overwhelming. There were a few other organizational changes that needed to take place because of it, but it all worked out. We made it work. There was good problems to have, and then we did it a few more times to be able to do that, and it sent out a recipe for okay, what else can we do?
39:24
So it wasn’t. You have to only do that one thing like the whole, then we’re never going to do anything else. It’s how do we take all of the energy, put it towards that thing so that it succeeds, and then if you want to do another one, you can do it, but you got to put all effort into that on that one. So that’s kind of how it rang, how it rings, true, and some of the time are you going to get into problems with it, of course, because the next one we did was on was on diabetes, and the problem with diabetes is it’s an insulin issue. The problem with insulin, especially in the United States, is that it is now a chemical, it’s not just a hormone in your body. So to be able to talk about it became it wasn’t controversial. It was worse than that it was. There were a lot of semantics that had to be taken care of in the wording of things, because pharmaceutical companies own the word adrenaline, which is insane.
40:31
Adrenaline or insulin, insulin, sorry, oh, okay, insulin.
40:35 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So we couldn’t just say oh, so it was like a copyrighted name.
40:39 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
Yeah. So we and you couldn’t just say you know, altering your diabetes is all about figuring out your insulin and getting your hormones working properly and getting your insulin producing in such a way that it becomes, goes back to kind of a reset, and doing that. We couldn’t talk about it that way, so we always had to. Every time we said insulin, it had to be your body’s insulin, which makes for very repetitive copy and like there’s just a whole lot of conundrums that went along with it. So can it be done? Yes, are there easier ways to do it? Yes, and are you going to? Are you going to know that from the onset? No, there’s no way anybody could have known at that time, because it wasn’t public, that it was a copyrighted pharmaceutical word. They were just on the precipice of going from, I think, insulin was like maybe $10 a shot up to $150 or $250 a shot, like it’s insane now.
41:40 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So where in the four stages do you start with? Most of your clients, Like who should be saying I got to get Michelle on the phone because I’m in, I’m right here and I see that she can take me to here.
41:58 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
We love people that are just on the precipice of the growth phase, so they know they’re kind of in the startup phase, but they’re an experienced startup, like they know what they’ve got it. They’ve got products, they have systems in place. They may have technology in the place. It may be in the state that I like to call frankenware, and what that is is they’ve got a piece of software here, pieces of software there. They try to stick them together and pump life into turns, into more of a monster than a leaving breathing entity, and that’s when we can come in and go.
42:32
Okay, I see what you’re trying to create here, but this isn’t the way to do it. Let’s back up the bus, create an overall system of plan, one that has operational integration, data integration, that your systems are actually up to date on what it is that you want to achieve today. Because a lot of times at that time it’s like well, we’re just doing the way we did it three years ago. Why? Because it’s not broke. Don’t break it. It’s like it’s broke. We need to look at this now. But we want to be able to have those systems so that your ideal client is having their ideal journey, and that’s really where that Venn diagram comes in is how do you do the market research on your ideal client, or how do you figure out who your ideal client is in the first place, what is their ideal journey, and then how do you create that and implement it for them? And is that often?
43:26 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
as simple, from a getting started standpoint, as asking them.
43:32 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
Sometimes they’re existing clients or they’re past clients, like you said, with them.
43:36
So take this company right and or Apple. You’ve got all these products on the table. Who do you ask? Which ones are you like? Who are you going to go back to and ask? And the problem is is that some of the products aren’t going to give you the profitability that other products are giving you. They’re not going to give you the satisfaction that others give you. They’re not going to give you the, the company culture that you’re looking for. They’re not going to give you like, there’s a whole lot of existential things that go on with a client’s journey that doesn’t make them optimal. So, for example, if we have in this case well, actually, let’s go back to the Apple example If they had chosen at that time to take on phones, when the iPod came out at that time, a phone was a phone.
44:30
It made phone calls. There is nothing revolutionary about it. Could we compete? Yeah, are we going up against the Sony’s or Samsung’s, the other phone companies? Yeah, is it worth it? Not really, right? So you got to look at kind of all of those things. We could go after laptops, but it’s really expensive. It’s a really big invention in input that we have to have. It requires a lot of engineers and a lot of different components to be able to make something that exists, separate from what Microsoft had going on at the time. But then there was this one little thing that had magic. Nobody had created something that had the capacity to have hundreds, if not thousands, of songs on it. You could play music forever and never hear the same song twice. That was the magic of that little black box and that had the intrigue, that had the marketability, that had the market and it allowed them to go put a lot of engineering into a simple product. So it hit all the boxes.
45:36 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
They also, if I recall, regulatory was a big hurdle for that, because Napster and these other companies at the time were trying to cut the artists out and basically just give you their stuff. But Apple approached it differently and said, hey, we’re partners with you.
45:51 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
Yep, absolutely. So. It was the one thing that checked all the boxes, and that’s really what you want to look at is, out of all these things, what are the boxes that we want to check? Because, for some companies, corporate culture is important to them and we want to maintain this corporate culture. This product line and the clients that we would attract with that product line are not going to allow us to maintain this particular culture.
46:18
Do we want to go there or is it worth going here? And it can’t be a one off. Oh yeah, that one beats this one in that department, so let’s go there. There has to be a list of complexities that you’re looking at when do I want my business? In the end, we want to do that reverse engineering and a lot of people go, oh, I just want that tactic. No, you don’t just want that tactic.
46:42
If you want this to be a $10 million business, a $100 million business, we have to look at what are all the criteria that you want it to look like at that time and then go, ok, is this product going to lead us there? And if the answer is no, then that’s not the right product. If this one clicks and nine boxes out of 10 and nobody clicks 10 boxes out of 10, ok, we might look at that, but it really has to. It starts with what do you want to create? Because so many times I’ll go into a business and say, ok, yeah, that’s all you need to do to become a million-dollar business, and they’re like no, I’ll get back up, but do you really want to be a million-dollar business? Do you really want to be a $10 million business?
47:29
Another example of this is Fun. One is right now well, in 2022, so it’s a little bit of old news Walmart is competing with Amazon on the delivery of products and services. Now, once upon a time, walmart was the king of kings in the retail world. Amazon came in, kicked their proverbial butt and they are now kind of 10 times bigger, faster, better in the world of delivery products than Walmart is. But Walmart is looking at how do we become competitive in that realm again? And the big question is do we even want to be competitive in that realm? Because that realm is what they call the last mile of delivery, is the most expensive, it’s the arduous, it creates silos of departments that you have to be able to maintain.
48:24
It is a very complex system to be producing in that way, let alone competing in that arena, and it takes a serious consideration. Is it worth getting there? Or are we just happy, creating a profit where we are and they’re like, okay, all things considered, no, let’s go for it. This is what we want to do. This is how we want to do it. This is how we want to be different than Amazon and their approach to it, and this is so. They’ve been doing it and they have grown substantially. I think their online or on their yeah, their online deliverability has improved like 25% per year for them. 25% growth. A company that’s one-tenth of where it needs to be isn’t going to get them to where they need to go until they get that exponential growth. But with the strategies that they have in place, they’re putting the pieces in place such that they will have that hockey stick growth at the end, which will then allow them to compete with Amazon.
49:26
Now, when you’re talking about, you know, bob’s plumbing or Steve’s law firm, you’re going I don’t want to create a hundred million dollar business. This is ridiculous. This is not going to happen and that’s totally cool. But what you want to look at is the profitability and the lifestyle of what it is that you want to create. So, depending on who you are, what phase of business you’re in, someone is sell to a bigger company, and that’s awesome, and then you want to look at the sellability of a business Some of them. You want to look at the profitability of the business.
49:56
I just want my company, the people in my company, to be happy to come to work, to have that autonomy that they’re looking for, so that I can go to Fiji for a month and I know that they have a higher vested interest in doing good than if I was standing there over there. Show they’re going. Are you doing your job? Are you doing your job? Are you doing your job? How about now? Right, some people want that, some people don’t, and it really comes back to business. Culture is highly important. What’s the end lifestyle? There’s like 20 things that you want to be able to go through and check off or create a description for in order to know what direction you want your company to go in, because a lot of people don’t realize. As I stand here today, I have 360 degrees of options to me. I always have options, you always have options. You always have 365 degrees of options around you at all times. I can’t go in 365 degrees at the same time.
50:52
I have to pick one and only one. And the further down that road that I can go, the easier it is to go overdale and around trees and all that kind of fun stuff and end up going back to that one direction again. But if I don’t have that one direction, every decision I make to go navigate this creek or go around that tree could set me in a new direction. You want to make sure that your plan is long term enough to be able to sustain that and get past it.
51:23 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
And yeah, it reminds me of you might have said that before, but it’s really important to ask and to be able to answer what do you want? Because when you’re able to answer what you want and the question what you want and you have some clarity on that, which I’m sure you help people get, then moving from spaghetti on the wall to growth, to scaling, to exit options becomes a lot clearer. Not that you’re going to get it 100% right, I think, which is what you’re saying, but at least you are starting towards something that you can measure toward and then adapt as you learn and go along. Do I have that right?
52:07 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
Absolutely so. If you take somebody that’s in a coaching business, right, they’re often give me the most black. Well, I can do, I don’t care what you do. But what they don’t realize is really, if you had 10 clients at 10 grand a year, you have $100,000 in business. That’s an awesome lifestyle Like that. Right, there is, you work what? Maybe five hours a week, you make 100 grand a year. Like that’s pretty sweet.
52:33
And when you can get past that, I have to compete with somebody else in their lifestyle and what they’re doing. And there you go and all that stuff. It’s like no, get past all of that crap. And at the end of the day, do you want to be at home petting your dog, playing with your kids, laughing with your spouse? Like, what do you want to be doing? And how do you want to be doing it?
52:54
Because it really does take a special kind of crazy to go. I want to have 50 employees. I want to take over the world, I want to have and there’s certain things that are going to come in place. I’m not saying you can’t have a good relationship with your kids, you can’t pet your dog in the day. Yeah, you bring your dog to work with you and, yeah, you celebrate kids at work and teach them how to be entrepreneurs and and you crack jokes with your spouse and hopefully they laugh at you sometimes and you have to learn to laugh at that joke. But it’s a different lifestyle. It’s a very different lifestyle than just having a 10 hour week and being done with it and being able to go home again.
53:34 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
So I love that. I mean you’re right and I love that idea. Right Because a lot of people have that idea. Like you said, they don’t want to have employees and they may want a 10X in their mind. And they’d be like, yeah, it would be great. They just don’t want to do that. Trouble with those businesses, though, is what happens if you know.
53:57 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
Something happens to you that’s like there’s no more business, right, that’s potentially so potentially, because a lot of people also just don’t think about that and yes, if you get sick, you know you’re going to have to call your employees by yourself, hopefully get your spouse to call them and say, hey, they’re sick, they can’t make the call today, but again, it’s going to. Every business is going to have its challenges.
54:21
Yeah every single one of them, no matter what, and it’s not a matter of you know, maybe I, you know, the day I go to retire, it’s like I just finish all my clients and I go OK, I’m not taking clients anymore, I’m just going to go travel and backpack the world.
54:36
So good for you, that’s fantastic. Or it’s possible that you have a client-based build-up and you actually do have an exit strategy. You have worked with other business coaches and say, hey, Diane is a fantastic client and I would love to see you guys have a meeting, see if he can act and take over this client and you can have a. You know, you might get paid 5% for lifetime in the client or whatever it is. You can create those negotiations to be able to overcome. Or you could build a business coaching business that has a training component to it, that has an online presence, that does pay every month, that has a membership site to it and you do get paid in perpetuity as long as there’s people still signing up and again, it comes back to what do you want and then how do we create it.
55:29
But you can’t start from here and build out. You have to know what your end game plan is and then reverse engineer it. Right. It doesn’t make sense for me to go OK, I want to go to New York, how do I get? Or I want to go on a trip when do I go? And then end up somewhere I could. That’s a very different journey than I want to go to New York, my end goal. Reverse engineer it how do I get from here to where I want to be, so that I predictably end up at that place?
56:01 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Well, michelle, for something that began to happen in the summer of 69, you’ve sure taken us on a very long and fascinating journey and I’m excited about the work you’re doing and how you’re trying to not trying. You are helping people get what they want, and I love I just love people who can help entrepreneurs, in particular, figure it out, because what they’re doing is very hard and it’s not something that’s easy to figure out on your own, and there’s a path. You may not you know and you may not know the path, but someone knows the path, someone like you, and you could help them find the path stay on the path and maximize the path.
56:51
So I it’s been really great talking to you about this. Thank you so much for being on. How do you like people to get a hold of you? And also, is there anything that I should have asked you?
57:02 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
I usually like when they flirt across the bar, but assuming you didn’t wear.
57:07 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Well, I guess you know if they’re in your neighborhood, then that’s fine.
57:13 – Michelle Nedelec (Guest)
I’m kidding. You can go to Michellenettocom and find all the ways that are fascinating to you. Some people are LinkedIn people, some people are Facebook. I’m on all the platforms and you can actually book a time to meet with me, and I have some gifts to give. I’m sure we gave you a link for a free gift for for peeps that are interested in finding out more about us. You can do that and, by all means, book a call with me and just go. Hey, this is where I’m at in my business and I’m thinking about doing this, that and the other thing. What do you think I should do to get there? I love those calls and I’m happy, happy, happy to give people ideas to be able to do that.
57:52
I have worked with people from beautiful woman in Jamaica and that was like I have this idea, it’s not working. Went through a website and I said change this down the other thing. She phoned me back about six months later, went oh my God, I can’t thank you enough I’ve had, and she just went through this litany of the experiences that she had in the way that her business grew. I love that. That just warms the cockles of my heart and I could do that all day and and then there are businesses that want me to go in and you know, let’s get our hands dirty and go and figure this all out and that’s where I get paid and that’s probably more like work, but that’s still super fun for me too. So wherever you are in that spectrum, I would love to connect with you and help you out with your business.
58:34 – Mike Malatesta (Host)
Okay, awesome, so call Michelle. From Michelle and that likecom, find out everything that she can help you with. Michelle, thank you so much for being on the show today and to everyone that’s listening. I hope you got a lot of value out of Michelle and our conversation today and please maximize the greatness that’s inside of you today and every day.
58:53
Hey everybody, thanks for listening to the show and before you go, I just have three requests for you. One if you like what I’m doing, please consider subscribing or following the podcast on whatever podcast platform you prefer. If you’re really into it, leave me a review, write something nice about me, give me five stars or whatever you feel is most appropriate. Number two I’ve got a book. It’s called Owner Shift how Getting Selfish Got Me Unstuck. It’s an Amazon bestseller and I’d love for you to read it or listen to it on Audible or wherever else Barnes, noble, amazon you can get it everywhere If you’re looking for inspiration that will help you unlock your greatness and potential, order or download it today so that you can have your very own copy, and if you get it, please let me know what you think. Number three my newsletter. I do a newsletter every Thursday and I talk about things that are interesting to me, and or I give more information about the podcast and the podcast.
59:48
Guess that I’ve had and the experiences that I’ve had with them. You can sign up for the podcast today at my website, which is my name MikeMalatestacom. To do that right now, put in your email address and you’ll get the very next issue. My newsletter is short, thoughtful and designed to inspire, activate and maximize the greatness in you.
