[00:00:00] Melissa Kellogg Lueck: Welcome. I am marketing expert and business coach, Melissa Kellogg Lueck. And this is the doing business like a woman podcast, where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money is made to help you create greater impact and financial freedom, one business at a time.
Good morning. It's a frosty morning, 19 degrees. Ginger and I are on our walk. It's a beautiful, beautiful sunrise. So much color in the sky. The blue and the pink and the grays and oranges and yellows. Lots of wispy high clouds. Which can sometimes mean we have a storm coming, but who knows.
So, I [00:01:00] wanted to start this recording. Because,
here it comes, out of my mouth, I'm gonna write a book. I'm gonna write a book. I have felt the call, the pull. I don't know, I have it in my notes somewhere, but probably about a year ago, I knew I was being called to write a book. And last night, I think it was last night, it hit me,
or maybe it was yesterday during my journaling time, I don't know, but I'm writing a book.
And I just, the feeling in my body when I say that is, it's just amazing. It's a really good feeling. I've known my whole life I would write a book, but I always felt like I had to wait until something happened to me before I wrote a book. Something exciting, right? Well, this coming year is exciting and it hasn't even happened yet.[00:02:00]
The exciting part of it is that will celebrate 20 years since I founded my business, Avanti Creative Group Incorporated. And so I'm going to be writing a book, a story of being a female entrepreneur over the last 20, 25 years, and specifically around founding and running my own company. And it's going to be right now.
What I'm thinking is what's coming to me is like. So since it's 20 years, like 20 lessons from 20 years, like 20 of the biggest lessons. And I want to share that because want to inspire and [00:03:00] inform, educate All of the female entrepreneurs that are coming up after me, right, that have founded businesses in the last 20 years that we can that we can shoot, what's the word?
It's not coming to me. Commiserate, that's the word, we can commiserate and and I can also inspire and just share my story so that it normalizes the entrepreneurial journey. Because I think my entrepreneurial journey is much more like yours and what you might be experiencing. Much more like yours than maybe a lot of the other books and stories that come out.
You know, the get rich, I got rich [00:04:00] quick, I hit it big type of books. Cause I haven't hit it big. I've had it very. Slow growth trajectory over the 20 years of my business, and I am not ashamed of that. I am so very proud of the measured growth I've experienced over 20 years. And
I think it's a very typical type trajectory. I mean, there have been some really amazing things that have happened. And, of course, I will share all the spicy details and all the exciting things. But also, I think we don't often hear The stories of regular resilience. I mean, we know from statistics, I'll have to look up the [00:05:00] latest numbers.
Oh my gosh, the mountains are so beautiful. They're like pink right now, glowing pink with the white snow, with the sunrises making them turn pink with blue. It's really beautiful. And the wispy clouds overhead. But we know. I'll have to update the statistics but the last numbers I know is that the average small business in America has revenue of you know, a small business with one, I think it's like one to, I don't know, one or two people, like a micro business, right?
Has an average revenue of 44, 000 a year. And I'll definitely update these. But when I looked that up just a few years ago, that's what it was. And so I know in the early years of my business, I was right around under, over that mark. So I was a typical entrepreneur, small business owner here in America. [00:06:00] And so I want to share that story because I think I know for myself, I can speak for myself, what I thought about in the early years of my business was, was I was looking for that big Thing right that big hit of the one thing I'm going to get discovered and and all the money will come flowing in But that's not how growth happens and maybe that's the first lesson As we're talking that the first lesson is That real growth happens day after day decision after decision step by step one foot in front of the other When we decide to get the, you know, first of all, decide we want growth, then we decide to grow a little bit each day.[00:07:00]
And one of my mentors, she says she runs her business. This is my mentor, Sandra Yancey, the CEO and founder of eWomen Network. She says she runs her business on three every day, three things. And it's number one is making the cash register ring or bringing in revenue. Number two is moving the business forward, and number three is, is meeting a looming deadline, or serving a client, right?
So, if you think about that, and you think about getting 1 percent better, or, you know, 1 percent better each day, That's really how a million dollar business, or a highly successful, sustainable business is built. And I haven't made it, even yet, 20 years later, to making a million dollars a year in [00:08:00] my business.
But that's a goal of mine, and I'm still working on it. It was not my goal, when I started 20 years ago, that's for sure. When I started my business 20 years ago. The goal was to make money enough money where I could live and pay rent and you know, meet my basic needs and live in the mountains with my then boyfriend, who's now my husband of, I don't know, 16 years or something now we're closing in on our 20th anniversary.
But that was my goal then and not have to work. In the. In the resort industry and wanted to be doing some more work. I was doing before I moved up there to be with him. And so that's why I started my business [00:09:00] is because I wanted to we had been dating for about about a year and a half. And we really liked each other.
We saw a future together. And so we wanted to be closer together and to live Wow, look at the sunrise. It's so beautiful now. I'll have to take a picture of this too. So we wanted to be close together. And, hold on, and so, I took a beautiful picture, I'll share that. And I was living in Boulder, Colorado, at the time.
And I so, we were, he had just, let's see, a couple of years before, yeah, a couple of years before, had just moved to the mountains. And to take a job there. And so he was working a corporate job there. And I had never lived in the mountains, and I didn't see any reason why [00:10:00] I would like to try it. So, one of us had to move, and I decided I wanted it to be me, and that was my decision.
I was really excited about that. I I was born and raised here in Colorado and lived mainly on the what you would call the plains and grew up a farmer's daughter and grew up with a lot of flat land. And so the thought of living in the mountains was very exotic and attractive. And so I decided I would move to the mountains and that was super exciting.
So I did that. And shortly after, I don't know, less than six months after moving, I decided I was going to start my business. But what happened, how that happened, is that I was working for, at that time, was a marketing manager and office manager for [00:11:00] a mortgage bank who had a home office. They had a branch here in Boulder, but they had a home office in Fort Worth, Texas.
Oh, look at that pretty dog.
Stop. No puppy dancing.
Morning. Easy. Stop. Come on. We're going this way. We
just passed a St. Bernard. Beautiful dog, but I think he wants to kill Ginger. It's very Exciting. Anyhow. And she doesn't help the matter because she does this little poppy dance thing, which gets dogs all riled up. So anywho, where was I? So I was working for a mortgage bank in [00:12:00] Boulder. And it's kind of funny how I got that job.
I had moved to Boulder in 2002. After 9 11 happened in 2001 that was a very I was living in the New York area, so I lived through 9 11 in New York, and it was a very obviously difficult Experience and it was a real wake up call for me where I really had to ask myself if I go to work tomorrow and I don't come home, this is how I want my life to end.
And I had just turned 30 that year in 2001 and, was working for an internet software. This is like the, the internet boom during the internet boom. And I was a newly minted MBA graduate working in the internet boom. So in New York, [00:13:00] so much excitement. And I was just running around a five state area as a sales and marketing a, a small company and lots of very exciting things, but just working all the time. Working and then going out and partying and I was having a lot of fun, but I was also exhausted and I knew that that life wasn't sustainable for me. I felt like I wasn't, you know, my spirit wasn't being fed, honestly, right.
And I was working in a male dominated industry and I did not like the. chauvinism and how it was treated. But, you know, I guess I have to say the company that I worked for at the time, they were an amazing group. Of all men, but I, I, they were [00:14:00] very respectful, very great people to work for. It's not, it wasn't, it didn't have anything to do with them.
It's just the industry in general, I should say, like going to trade shows or meetings or whatever. You know, I was always the only woman in the room and treated differently in a not so respectful way a lot of times. And so then 9 11 happened. And I decided I needed a big change. I wanted to be So, on 9 11, on that day, September 11th a lot of the communications, the cell towers were interrupted because they were all, the majority of them were all on top of the World Trade Center.
So when the World Trade Center went down, so did a lot of communications. And meaning the phone systems, right? The phone systems were jammed up. And I couldn't get [00:15:00] word to my family. They couldn't get through to me that I was alive. And I know for so many families and people, it was obviously a heck of a lot worse.
But it really shook me up. And I didn't want to be apart from my family anymore. I didn't want to be separated like that from them again. And so, I decided I was ready to leave New York, which was heartbreaking in and of itself because being in New York, going to New York was a childhood dream of mine and let me tell you, when I I went to school and lived there.
I loved every second. I lived every minute to the fullest. I did everything I wanted to do. I met and worked for and was mentored by some of the most amazing people. And That's a whole other [00:16:00] book,
but in the end of 2001, I was ready to leave. And so in 2002, I picked up, pulled up stakes and I came back to Colorado. And I moved in to a townhouse in downtown Boulder with a girlfriend of mine from New York. She had also left New York after 9 11, but she was a total transplant. She was originally from Connecticut and had always wanted to live in Colorado.
So she needed a roommate and we knew each other and so it was nice to have that connection, that friendship. And I moved in with her and went to her about, about looking for work. And I have, you know, done lots and lots of types of jobs. [00:17:00] I'm very resourceful. So the first thing I did is I signed up with the TEMP agency because I had a lot of, you know, office.
Support administrative experience, which is always no matter where you go. You can find a job doing that So send up with a temp agency and started getting some office work. And so one of the places I was placed was this mortgage company and Everywhere I went and most of the Assignments I got it didn't last very long, because I always wanted to hire me on full time, and I'd be like, no, I don't want to do that.
And because I was freelancing and doing some other things and so, I started to work for this mortgage company. There's our big friend. Oh, his dogs are so beautiful. It's a golden retriever, [00:18:00] and he's super five. Oops.
Sorry. Aren't they so pretty? How are you? Good. Merry Christmas.
My daughter's in love with your dogs. She sees them every day after school.
Say hi.
You too. Take care. Take care.
So, I got placed at this mortgage company, and I really like them. I like the people. The the owner, who is my boss, is an amazing man. Very entrepreneurial himself. Owns quite a few businesses. And and I liked working there and then this was in March of, I don't know, whatever year. I remember it so distinctly because it was right around my birthday.
My birthday is March 19th. And it was like March 17th or something, we got this enormous, enormous snowstorm. And I lived in downtown Boulder. So we [00:19:00] walked and rode our bikes everywhere. So, big snowstorm, no big deal, because we were walking and riding bikes, right? So, we're probably walking. And so everything was shut down.
Morning! And then everything was shut down. And like the next day, they needed someone to come in and no one else could come in and I was like, I can come in because their office wasn't far from where I lived and people still weren't able to get around. I was like, I can come in. And so I came in and it was like, I think it was from that time on, then I started working there regularly and got on staff and I started it out.
This was always a thing that happened too. I kind of had mission creep where I'd start out as like the secretary and then they'd want to promote me, promote me, promote me, right? And so a similar thing happened here. I started out doing administrative [00:20:00] work, and then when they found out I also had an MBA in marketing, they're like, Oh, we could do our marketing too.
It's like, okay. So we're home now. So I'll wrap up this chapter, but I started there and they had, I can't remember how many, I don't know, we probably had five, six loan officers. And the owner and processor some other folks in there. So a nice size staff was a really great working environment. And my boss was an amazing man.
I learned a lot from him and he taught me a lot about successfully marketing in that industry. And so he would teach me and I would do things and. We were very successful at that and yeah, so I think that's the end of that chapter. And we'll have another one coming up, [00:21:00] you know, the role, here's the teaser, right?
That, that boss and that company that I started with became a very integral part of the founding of my business and part of a big part of the reason that I'm still here 20 years later. So we will tell the rest of the story in our next installment. Have a fabulous day. Talk to you soon.
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