90 | Fun Strategies for Overcoming Business Challenges with Mel Selcho

What do you do when your business launch falls flat? As entrepreneurs, we pour our hearts into our work, but what happens when the results don’t match the effort? 

In this episode of The Organized Coach Podcast, we’re tackling one of the most challenging aspects of business ownership: staying motivated and finding joy in the face of unmet expectations.

Joining me is Mel Selcho, a marketing expert and stage four breast cancer survivor whose journey is nothing short of remarkable. Mel shares her unique perspective on navigating setbacks with grace and resilience. 

Together, we explore how to interpret your numbers without letting them define you, borrow success strategies from other areas of life, and determine what you truly want from your entrepreneurial journey. 

Whether you’re facing a tough season or simply want to prepare for the ups and downs of business ownership, this episode is packed with wisdom and actionable advice.

We dive into practical steps for moving forward when you feel stuck, how to evaluate your current strategies with clarity, and knowing when it’s time to pivot. Mel’s ability to draw lessons from her personal and professional experiences is both inspiring and empowering. Her strategies will challenge you to rethink your relationship with failure and refocus on what truly matters.

Plus, I share an exciting announcement about the Organized Life Academy’s 2025 focus and how we’re using the 12-Week Year to break our goals into manageable chunks, stay motivated, and achieve remarkable progress.

Don’t miss this episode, which is filled with heartfelt encouragement, actionable insights, and the tools you need to overcome obstacles with joy and purpose.

[00:00:00] Tracy Hoth: How do you stay joyful when your launch falls short of your expectations or of the goal that you set? As a business owner, I think it’s easy to get overwhelmed first by all the choices that you have, by all the things you need to work on and want to learn, and then by the setbacks, those launches that don’t get you the results that you want.

The effort that you put into your social media or a webinar that you had or anything else that there is, and then you don’t feel like the effort was worth it. I know for me, that’s a big thing that I’ve worked on a lot. We have Mel Selko here, and teaches us strategies from the business bullpen to the chemo chair and back.

She’s went through a lot in her life and she has such a delightful way about her that is just so fun to absorb all of that from her. Mel teaches us how to decide the best action when there’s so many choices. She teaches us about the fun scale and what to do when you’re worried that the strategy isn’t working that you’re choosing to test.

And so much more. I really ask her lots of questions and want lots of examples. I think you’re going to be able to really relate to what she talks about today. Before we get into the episode, I. see you. I believe that you are out there and you have been listening to this podcast. You’ve enjoyed it.

Also, you’ve loved it. You’ve learned a lot. You have a desire to be more organized in your home, in your life. You just haven’t taken that next step to join Organized Life Academy. This is the program that helps you organize your home, declutter, let go with ease, and organize your life. We’re going to put systems and routines in place in 2025.

That’s going to be a really big goal. We’re going to practice planning using the organizing steps and also using the 12 week year ideas and concepts into our goals. I mean, my goal is to help you have the most success that you can. And I love some of the ways that the 12 week year helps you do that. It, it condenses the time that we’re looking at and helps us have more success and stay more motivated.

I’m using it for myself in my life and my business in 2025. I’m going to teach you and lead us through that in how we declutter, organize our home and implement routines. If you’re out there and you’ve been considering and you’re kind of thinking, I do want to do it, but I don’t know, should I, should I not?

I want you to join us and I’m giving you a special little bonus right now. If you go to the link in the show notes and you’re one of the first seven to join, you can join Organized Life Academy for 400 off. I’m even putting the payment link in there. If you can’t afford to make the full payment right now, I want you to still be able to join.

You can have the payment link. There’s a payment link and a full pay link, and I want you inside. We have 35 amazing women right now, and I know there are more of you. I really do believe it. We’re going to have so much fun in 2025. So get in there and let’s get into this week’s episode with Mel Cilco.

Are you ready to work less? Feel more organized and productive, streamline repetitive tasks, and implement systems that allow your coaching business to run smoothly even without you. If so, you’re in the right place. Welcome to the Organized Coach Podcast, your go to source for practical tips and solutions.

I’m your host, Tracy Hoth. I’m a professional organizer, certified life coach, simplifying expert, and most of all, down-to-earth fellow coach just like you. No matter if you think you’re missing the organizing gene, have ADHD, or just love anything organizing, I’m here to help you become an organized coach with a business that works for you.

Pull up a seat and let’s get started. Here we go. This is all about kind of enjoying the journey, the joy of entrepreneurship, which I think it’s something that’s come up for me a lot. I have Mel Selko on the podcast today. I’m so excited to have her.  Mel, welcome. Hey, good to be here. I had you come in as a guest expert in Organized Life Academy and it was so good.

I’ve even had people, I haven’t told you this, but I’ve even had people talk about I’m What they took away from that and how meaningful it was and how they’re trying to implement some of what you talked about. So I’m like, okay, we got to have you on the podcast to look at, in that case, we’re kind of talking about our personal lives more and our home and, you know, just in general, but today I really want to talk about doing and sharing what you shared there in our businesses, because I probably shared this with people on the podcast before, but.

I tend to every other month or so want to quit and like get really frustrated if I don’t reach my goals and think everything and I’ve heard this from other coaches to like it was just a waste of time because I spent all this time doing something and it didn’t get the results that I wanted.  I really think that what you shared was so important.

I’m going to let you introduce yourself, tell us who you are and, and what you do to help people. Okay, perfect.

[00:05:24] Mel Selcho:  I am Mel Selko. I have been a marketer for, I want to say since I was born because I’ve always been selling something to somebody and studied it formally in college and then went on to a core marketing career that ended last year by my choice with where I was the director of sales, marketing, and client experience.

For a regional home inspection company. I took them from about 750, 000 in annual revenue to 4 million. So growing businesses is super fun. I left to go be able to do what I did for them to help other businesses. I like to say I help disruptors. People who want to have a business that wasn’t their dad’s, that want to do business their way, those are the people I like to work with.

[00:06:13] Tracy Hoth: Ooh, I love that. Okay, so let’s dive in then. I think about taking a company from, what’d you say, 750 to 4 million is kind of amazing. Now you’re on your own and you have your own business. Who do you help? Well, you help business owners. Is that what you’re saying?

[00:06:32] Mel Selcho: That’s right.  Either business owners or people who are a leader in a business, I work one on one with them as well.

If you’re like the marketing person for a business, a lot of small businesses start and they hire one marketing person that’s expected to do everything. I help them hit, hit their goals, create systems and grow.  I really love helping entrepreneurs create the kind of clients they want to work with instead of the clients they complain about working with.

[00:07:03] Tracy Hoth: How do you, in your own business, what do you, I mean, there’s so many choices. How do you decide the best action when there are so many choices?

[00:07:12] Mel Selcho: I have always loved having big ambitious goals. I used to go to our corporate quarterly meetings and say I wanted to have delicious, I always called it delicious, uh, delicious.

We called them rocks, but they were quarterly projects that we would do to hit an annual goal. The universe or whatever you want to call it, happenstance offered me some insight that I didn’t ask for on July 11th, 2022, I was diagnosed with what became stage four breast cancer out of the blue. I had just renewed my health insurance to a high deductible plan because I was quote unquote, so healthy in June and in July. The doctors said that I had a 13 percent survival rate.

I was overwhelmed. I have a really good associative brain and I was like, the stakes were really high and I thought everybody started telling me what to do. That’s a lot like being in a small business. You get all this advice from everyone and the stakes are really high.

Like you want to eat, you want to pay your bills. Those are pretty high stakes and you don’t want to go back to corporate. What I learned from my corporate life helped me in my cancer journey and then I have brought it back to business. I’ve learned because life gave me this insight, I didn’t ask for how interconnected personal life and business life are.

That’s a little bit of the background and I have some tips to share today. Yes, I can’t wait. How to choose what you’re going to do. When you’re overwhelmed, I have four for overwhelm. When you’re overwhelmed and you feel like you don’t know what to do. So it might be a launch that you’re starting.

It might be a whole business that you’re starting. It might just be the year that you’re starting. How you can decide the best course of action. I’ve got four tips for that. And the first one is know your numbers, but don’t be your numbers. So when I was in home inspection, we had this. Goal that got assigned to me.

I got voluntold a goal that the business wanted a 50 rate of people choosing an add on service. We hung around for years at 30%. I couldn’t look at that 30 percent and say we had failed because we kept growing it incrementally. We just had to keep trying new things to end up, to end up creating a success.

I ended up turning it, by one idea, I ended up turning it into an 85 percent add on rate. It was a really great way, but if I had stuck with, we’re at 30 percent and we want to be at 50 percent so we’re failing, I would have never gotten there. When I got cancer, I had a 13 percent survival rate.

That was a really important number to know, because I would die if I didn’t do something different. It was also a really important number not to be, because I had a really good chance, you know, if you get 87 percent on a test, that’s a good, that’s good. I had a really good chance of dying, and so I decided I was going to make a really aggressive course of action because of that.

I was going to forget that number. And when I came back, so when I came back, I worked sometimes with real estate agents, their market in terms of transactions started tanking in 2022 and 2023 and even 2024. And so it was important for them to know that the market was low. Home prices are high, but the number of transactions slowed down significantly.

If they were going to do the same thing that they did last year, it wasn’t going to have the same results. So that was an important number to know, but then you don’t want to be the market. You don’t want to have a 40 percent decrease in your business. So that’s tip number one. Tip number two is to borrow some success from what you’re already good at.

For me, that was marketing. I was like, okay, I’m really good at marketing and I’m really good at having a 90 day plan. And but it could be like for your listeners, especially if you’re really good at organizing, what makes you good at organizing? Um, if you are really good at cooking, what, if you’re good at planning a trip, if you are really good at parenting.

What are the elements that you can borrow from that? How do you decide a recipe? How do you decide an itinerary? And how do you decide when to adjust it? Use those same principles in your business. Those work, those work really well. Number three is decide what you want from the journey and then bring it.

I love the quote from Bashar that says. Waiting for the circumstances to change so you can feel good is like looking in a mirror, waiting for your reflection to smile first. That’s awesome. For me, that is always fun. It’s not that everything has to be fun, but I’m going to bring as much fun as I can to it, to everything.

And then tip number four is if you want to be the best, you got to work with the best. And that looks different in all different ways. I’ve always had a business coach, even when I was running the marketing for someone else, I had my own personal coach. I really believe in coaching. When I got cancer, I decided to use expert advice.

I went to MD Anderson. In addition to my local doctors, I hired a cancer coach. Then I love to read books and so I, and listen to podcasts. I borrowed some advice, um, from them as well.

[00:12:46] Tracy Hoth: Oh my gosh, so many goodness. Let’s go back through and use these four in a specific case for maybe a coach or business owner that’s listening.

Let’s say someone wants to have, I mean, is this a good example? Someone wants to have 10 one on one clients and they have two and they’re trying to get 10. They feel overwhelmed. How do you apply this? So just let’s walk

[00:13:12] Mel Selcho: through an example. Let’s do. So step number one is know your numbers, but don’t be your numbers.

So you are a coach. We’re doing coach, right? You are a coach with two clients and you want 10. You know you have two, but you don’t be the coach that has two clients. Ah, I see what you’re saying. You have to be the coach that has 10 clients. I had to be the 13 percent that we’re going to survive. And not the 87 percent that weren’t.

A lot of times we don’t want to know our numbers because we associate our own failure with those numbers. That’s why it’s important if you have to and you want 10 to know that you, you have to, but you can’t be the, the person that has to, you have to be the person that has 10.

[00:13:57] Tracy Hoth: I get it. I’m so glad I asked cause this makes so much more sense.

So you’re the, as the coach who has 10. You are living in kind of your future self then and you’re thinking like that coach and you’re acting like that coach. Is that what you mean? That’s right.

[00:14:13] Mel Selcho: There are eight out there that need me and so I’m gonna go find them and What I’m doing currently isn’t going to work to get me to ten because it got me to two. That’s the other part of knowing that number and not being the number is to recognize that What has gotten me here isn’t going to get me there.

So I need to do, I need to have some changes, which is totally fine. It’s not, that doesn’t mean you’re a failure.

[00:14:37] Tracy Hoth: Yes. Oh my gosh. That makes so much sense. That’s kind of exciting too. Then borrow success at what you’re already good at. What would be an example there? I know it depends on the person, right?

[00:14:49] Mel Selcho: Yeah, so you can either look back to how did I get these two clients and what could I do to create 10 from that sort of thing? Like how could I maximize it? I really love when you’re stuck in a rut in business, which, and it’s not fun to borrow success from a different part of your life that is so easy.

That’s why I use the cooking example or the trip example. If you’re a really great cook, which I am not, but let’s say I’m a good cook at the things I’m good at. But if you’re really a good cook, how do you decide the recipe? It might be a feeling that you get when you’re like looking for recipes and then you can apply that to marketing advice that you’re getting from other people or business advice.

You look for that same body feeling and then you’re going to follow that. And then how do you know which parts of the recipe you want to follow? Like, are you a, I get all the ingredients out first and then so look for ways that you can borrow success in the way that you feel when you’re doing those things in the way that you know, it’s going to work.

Like when you, if you’re a good cook, when you try a recipe, you have a lot of confidence in it. I could do planning a trip because I am really good at that. But you, when you plan a trip, you really believe you’re going to go. You don’t think 2020 is going to come and take away your trip from you. How do you decide what your itinerary is?

How do you decide where you’re going to stay? That’s how you decide what marketing approach you want. You can use those same feelings in your body when you hear advice, ways to find experts to help you.

[00:16:18] Tracy Hoth: Yeah, what stood out to me at first when you were saying that, what are you good at? I think, well, I’m finding success working out regularly because I’m texting a friend and we’re doing the same workout.

I have my daughter down there and she doesn’t do it every time with me, but I have her and say, when are we working out? Then we plan it. I could do that, take that success into a plan. Is that kind of work in that situation? That’s exactly it. You’re like, how did you decide what you were going to do to work out?

I found out from a couple of friends, but there were so many options, right? Then we just decided, I picked one that, that looked the best. We picked a online YouTube. Okay. You just pick, that’s the other part of it.

[00:17:03] Mel Selcho:  Right. So if you’re good at planning a trip, you pick a destination. You’re not like, I mean, maybe you go to the airport and you’re like, wherever’s closest, we’re going to go, right.

Pick the workout. Yeah. Then you committed to it. Like you break it down into all the steps and something that you’re good at. You’re like, I am the kind of person that knows how to pick something. Cause I picked a workout or I picked a destination for my trip or I picked a dress to wear today.

Whatever, like, you’re really good at, how do you do that picking if it’s really hard to pick in business? Mm hmm. Then you kind of look back at, well, I picked something that sounded fun or I picked something that someone else told me was good for what I needed. So you can go back into even the how that you do somewhere else that you’re really good at and apply that how in business.

[00:17:53] Tracy Hoth: But when you were talking to about the. Cooking, like I’m really good at cooking and lately I’ve been making a soup every, I don’t know, two to three weeks with everything left over in the refrigerator. A couple cans of this and some, you know, just throwing it together and it’s been delicious every single time.

When you were talking, I’m like, Oh yeah, that’s how it feels when I start making the soup. Like I could totally feel that confidence or, or like letting it go. I didn’t even matter if it wasn’t good because they were all leftovers that we, you know, maybe wouldn’t even have used. I probably could make it good even if at first it wasn’t good.

It’s so fun to think through that and, and have an example in mind.

[00:18:41] Mel Selcho: What I heard about that was trusting yourself.

[00:18:42] Tracy Hoth: That when you make that, that you then trust yourself, which I think is so lost, especially like in business, in small business.

[00:18:43] Mel Selcho: If you haven’t ever had a business, you don’t, it’s really hard to trust yourself that you have the instincts for your people.

But if you look at anywhere else that you’re good at the first time you did it, you didn’t like you didn’t, you hadn’t ever done it then either. So I love that. I love that example because trusting yourself for sure is part of your process.

[00:19:13] Tracy Hoth: Yes, that’s so interesting. That’s what’s great about a coach too is they reflect back to you something that you didn’t even know you were saying and you, yeah, so thank you.

Then design what you want and then bring fun in it or bring it in.

[00:19:26] Mel Selcho: Yeah. For me, it’s fun, but for other people it might be impact. It might be achievement. I love the question that I got from one of my coaches. How is it already true? How is it true? So for me, fun, I was selling home inspections.

I mean, to realtors, talk about the least fun part of real estate. Like all the other Instagram sites are about gorgeous bathrooms and yards and features of a house. And mine is like the ugly part of the crawlspace, but I decided to create a series tales from the crawlspace. Which were like all the funny things that we found in people’s crawl spaces, like Rubbermaid tubs that were supporting the house.

That was really interesting to my people who were realtors at the time. And so I decided I was gonna bring fun to real estate or to home inspection and, and it was my job to bring it. I, it wasn’t going to already be there. It’s like a smile in the mirror. I had to bring it.

[00:20:25] Tracy Hoth: Oh, that’s so good. As I think about that too, for myself, I’m like, what is it that I bring to organizing?

It is a little bit of fun. It’s a little bit of simplicity. Bring simplicity to it. Is that in a good example? Yeah. That could be your goal. Breaking it down.

[00:20:40] Mel Selcho: Yeah. Yeah. Then you want to bring simplicity to your business. So if you’re trying to get, if, if you’re a coach and that’s what, like, that’s what lights you up is simplicity.

Then when you’re trying to get 10 clients, you want to go with some, you want to bring the simplicity. So when things get really complex. You’re like, it’s my job to bring simplicity here instead of, I am a victim of the complexity.

[00:21:05] Tracy Hoth: Okay, good. And then be the best, work with the best. I mean, that to me makes sense or is very clear.

[00:21:12] Mel Selcho: Yeah. What’s really interesting is when you look for, like, one of the things I did in cancer is there was a woman who had studied people who beat the odds. What was really fascinating, and I think we can apply this in business, is they all did nine things, but they weren’t exactly the same. One of the things was change their diet, but they didn’t all change to the same diet.

When you apply that back to business, there are elements that all successful businesses do, but they all do it in their own way. And so when you borrow from the experts, you want to borrow that element and then make it your own. Okay. Okay.

[00:21:50] Tracy Hoth: That’s good. Okay. So these were four. I’m so glad we walked through.

Thank you for walking through that specific example. When you’re overwhelmed and don’t know what to do, these are four tips. What else can you share with us?

[00:22:03] Mel Selcho: The next part is when you’re worried your strategy isn’t working. And so I was there and again, we’re like high stakes in cancer, high stakes in business.

You start, if you’re going to start any sort of cancer treatment. You don’t get to know that day if it worked, like quote, unquote, worked, I think is probably the one of the worst words we have in bulk, in bulk, right? And so I have three strategies for this. The first strategy is to decide ahead of time.

What enough is, and so for me, I love to have either a liberal substitution policy. So there was one year I wanted to run 30 days for 30 minutes, and then I had a, I was like, but we can have an asterisk. I can make it up. So I had to do 30 different runs, but some days I would do two if I ended up missing or I decide that 80 percent equals quote unquote, every.

Or equals enough because enough is that like black hole that you can never fill when you do it on the back

[00:23:12] Tracy Hoth: end.

[00:23:13] Mel Selcho: If you want to get 10, let’s go back to our example. We have two clients and we want to get 10. We’re going to decide for whatever period of time, this is the strategy. This is the plan. This is the best guess that we have and how long, how much we’re going to do and what is quote unquote, every.

If we’re going to post every day on social media, you gotta build some wiggle room in. Can you post two days if you miss one, or is every 80%? Decide your own version of success, um, ahead of time.

[00:23:51] Tracy Hoth: That’s good to decide it, because I will say to people too, if you’re doing 80 percent of your plan, then that’s great.

But them deciding that ahead of time is really key because then they’re the ones looking at it and not someone later telling them, Oh, that was good.

[00:24:09] Mel Selcho: Okay. When the, you’re worried the strategy isn’t working, you can answer your brain with like, maybe it isn’t. We’re going to find out, right? We’re going to find out.

But this we decided was the strategy. And so this is what. We’re going to, we’re going to go all in on this as the strategy, then we will evaluate. The second is a little bit related to it. One is like deciding what the effort level needs to be. And the second is give time, time. This is the hardest part in, because when we hear something new, we assume it’s going to be successful.

There is a dopamine hit in our brain because we’re assuming it’s going to be successful. And when we’re in the. In the working of what we’re, of our plan, we don’t know if it’s successful yet and it’s easy for doubt to creep in. And so we’re actually fighting a chemical in our brain. So we have to, what if some people work in eight weeks, some people work in 30 days, I work in 90 days, that’s a really good chunk for me, but ahead of time is how long we’re going to decide to work it.

Um, and minus a disaster or what are the exceptions for not working it? So I’m sure in my cancer treatment, if the tumors were growing, like, because I could see something or like, you know, they would do blood work and things like that, that didn’t tell them about the cancer fighting. But if something was happening that was making this bad for me, we would have changed plans ahead of time.

But otherwise, we were going to do. This three months ish of chemotherapy and then we were going to see, we were going to do scans to see how it worked. And holding the belief through those three months was really hard and it was a beautiful thing because I didn’t have to keep second guessing all the things that I was going to do.

When you get rid of the second guesser, you end up having so much more space in your head and so much more energy towards continuing on your plan. So. That’s giving time, time and good ideas will still hit you. That’s awesome. Make a list, answer them. I’m like, we can consider that at this time. I don’t shut down good ideas.

I welcome them. But we’re not going to do them now. We’re going to do them at this time. We’re going to evaluate them at this time.

[00:26:25] Tracy Hoth: Yeah. That makes me think one of the ways you can do that and keep track of that idea is to have an appointment on the first of the next month or the first of the 90 day, the end of the 90 days.

Have an appointment on there like at 7 a. m. and keep in the description. all your other ideas that you want to try. That way you have a place to put that and you know that it’s there and it’ll come up on your calendar. But I love that you’re getting rid of the second guessing, you’re getting rid of the decision fatigue, you’re getting rid of all that self talk and that back and forth and that feels so freeing to decide that.

[00:27:05] Mel Selcho: It really is. It seems at the, at the moment you’re deciding it, it seems limiting because you’re like, what if I have the brilliant quote unquote right idea? There is no right idea. I wish there was, but you don’t know all the elements that you’re putting in. There was a time I was launching a series of classes, which is one of the ways I used to market at the home inspection company.

I went and taught the first one and it was a total, I thought it was a bomb. I thought, Oh, no, this is not going to work. It turned out somebody in that class really loved the idea. A month later, I’d given myself 90 days for this launch. A month later, their office asked me to put on a special conference just for those agents.

You just, you can’t know until you give the time, time. So, if the recipe says you got to bake it for 30 minutes and you take it out of the oven in two, it’s not going to be the cake you thought.

[00:28:00] Tracy Hoth: Oh, that’s such a good analogy. And you’re 100 percent all in then, instead of that second guessing and wondering.

Then your energy level and your commitment to it’s not there too, so I can totally see how that would be so valuable. Okay, and then what’s number three there?

[00:28:16] Mel Selcho: Number three, which. What you led into is the evaluation. And I love putting the, the date on your calendar. Every time you have a good idea that you want to think about then, putting the good, adding that to the calendar item.

You’re like, this is not getting lost. It really, good ideas want to be heard, but they’re not urgent. So let’s hear it. Let’s, let’s put it, let’s take the urgency out. I like to have four categories when I, whenever I’m evaluating a goal. The first are the wins. No matter how big of a failure a goal, like the results are, there have to be wins.

Even if it’s now we know what not to do, that is a win. What are things that worked? And what are the things that worked? What are the things that you enjoyed or were simple or whatever the thing you wanted to bring to the journey is? How did you show up in a way that was a win? I love to look at ahas. What did you learn?

Oh, I learned I don’t really like cold calling or I learned whatever it is. The third thing I call accidental excellence. What did you get out of it that you didn’t expect? So that person that gave me the conference talk, that would be accidental excellence. Things that, that you don’t necessarily know you’re going to get when you set out this goal, but kind of things that, that you, that you get along the way.

Okay. And the fourth one, I call a mulligan. So even if you hit your goal, I think there, there is no point in living at least a day or a week or a month or whatever, whatever that amount of time is without, if you have 20, 20 hindsight, what will you do differently knowing what you know? From either achieving or not achieving the goal.

If you allow the mulligan in, no matter what the result is, then it doesn’t feel so defeating to be like, Oh, I didn’t hit the goal. The goal is just the guess.

[00:30:11] Tracy Hoth: So wait, what’s a mulligan? It’s I know it’s golf, but what is it?

[00:30:16] Mel Selcho: It’s golf. So in golf, and I am not an expert golfer, but in golf I used to call it a fail.

I used to have my salespeople report a fail, but they did not like to report fails. I started calling it a mulligan. It’s like a do over in golf. So if you hit a bad shot, like you can, you get a mulligan and you can drop the ball and redo it.

[00:30:33] Tracy Hoth: Do you have to add a, is that where you, like it goes out and you add it?

I just borrowed.

[00:30:38] Mel Selcho: The term is like, so, so it’s like a do-over. A do-over is what I would call it. But when you call it something innocuous, like a mulligan, if you’re not, if you are a golfer, then a mulligan might have a bad feeling for you, but I’m not a golfer. Then that works. Just going to drop the ball and do it again.

I really love the idea that you could always do something better, no matter how great you did it or how badly you did it. That takes away the judgment of you in that equation, right? It’s like, what could we, now that we know what we know, what could we, what could we have done better? I heard on your most recent podcast, you referenced this, but if your plan, if you didn’t do your plan, I like to think it’s your plan’s fault.

[00:31:22] Tracy Hoth: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Did you hear me say that about you? I’m like, no, don’t tell me that.

[00:31:24] Mel Selcho:  It’s interesting. I have a daughter that works at one of those stretch places where you go and they stretch you. Yeah. It’s really interesting because when they stretch you, they only want a three, a five and a seven out of 10 in stretching.

Your guess might be a nine out of 10 in stretching you. That’s the times when you’re hurting yourself to like actually do all the things that you And so you don’t because you don’t want to hurt yourself. And so instead of coming back later and saying, Oh, I didn’t do that goal. It’s like, no, or I didn’t do my action plan.

My action plan was too big of a stretch for me. So, I need to find out a better stretch. I need a 3 or a 5 or a 7 in stretching, and it’s not my muscle’s fault it couldn’t stretch that far without hurting, right? So, I definitely like thinking about if, if we have a plan and we couldn’t, we couldn’t do it at whatever level we wanted to, 80 percent or whatever the wiggle room is, it’s the plan’s fault.

It’s not our fault.

[00:32:28] Tracy Hoth: Well, that muscle, that even brings a whole nother perspective to that and how it makes sense. I love that. And as you’re talking about this, I’m, I’m thinking you have to start at the beginning. You have to have a plan and a time period in order to come back and evaluate these things.

It’s so good to think about, you know, let’s make a plan since you shared with us, I went and got the book, the 90 day year or the, what is it? 12 week year. 12 week year, I think. Yes. And I am studying that because in 2025 in Organized Life Academy, that’s what we’re going to use. We’re going to do 90 day plans, so four of them, and we’re going to use like this stuff.

This is good. You’ll have to come back and help me to see even more in there. We talked about those three strategies. What else do you have? Do you just keep going?

[00:33:22] Mel Selcho: I have a lot, but I think that given what’s happening in the Organized Academy for next year, I have a really great, because a lot of times we have to choose our, we get to choose our challenges.

Sometimes life chooses it for us. Like in my cancer journey, life chose my challenge. The challenge was to survive. Actually, the challenge was to get the most out of the life that I have. And, but a lot of times we are in the lucky spot where we get to choose the challenge and I have a really great matrix to help us figure out what are the challenges that we want to choose for ourselves or our business works personal in personal life or in business life.

It’s, it helps us also know what is going to rob us of hitting those challenges. So like, what are the biggest distractions? So it seems like it would be a really great precursor to the next year of the Organized Academy. And I think in the show notes, you will have the link for, it’s a webinar and I’ll have a replay and you’ll get to, you’ll, my listeners can find out for that.

Yeah. Yeah. There’ll be a replay. I’ll show you how to use this matrix to show you your biggest priorities and then to plug the projects that you’re thinking of. into the matrix to tell you whether they are going to distract you from your priorities or whether they are going to contribute to your priorities.

[00:34:41] Tracy Hoth: Oh, that’s so fun. We did do a priority. We kind of did a dream and a vision board and we, you know, lasering in on what our priorities and then plug in, what did you say? Plug in. So then you plug in projects or ideas. Okay. And so

[00:34:56] Mel Selcho: if your priority, like in your business, let’s use the example. Like if my biggest priority is new clients and my, Next biggest priority is revenue.

Then if I’m like, Oh, maybe I should write a book. Well, those, that is like, that’s an asset for the business. It’s not going to hit the revenue or the clients in that year. And so it’s not a good year for that, but if I’m pretty good in clients and I’m pretty good in revenue, and so I just want to keep my baselines going, but I really want to build up some assets.

Then writing a book is a great idea that year. And so it helps you take all those good ideas off that list that you were going to evaluate for the next time and plug them in based on what you said your priorities were to know. And I always say the ones that, that are on the list, but don’t make the cut.

Those are your biggest distractions. Stay as far away from them as you possibly can because your brain will tell you you’re doing something when you’re doing them and really you’re robbing yourself of the ultimate goal that you want.

[00:36:02] Tracy Hoth: That’s so good. So when every, when every Instagram ad comes across about a new book, but if that is not your, or book coach or, you know, some new, new thing that’s out, write a book in 10 days, then you’re going to stay away from that.

That’s the distraction. If your goal is new clients and new revenue. That’s right.

[00:36:23] Mel Selcho: If those are your highest. And so we rank them in the priority and, and the work you may have, have already done is we’ll save people’s stuff. You rank the priorities by like, is this 80 percent of my priority of my strategy?

Is this 20%? You can have several. If you’re doing it personally, you might have health and wellness. You might have losing weight on your list or getting all your closets organized. You might have trips. Whatever they are, like, what are the biggest priorities you might have saving? So then you have to figure out what percentage those are of your total.

The things that come along, because there are going to be good ideas, but thankfully the world has a lot of good ideas. They’re just not always for us right now.

[00:37:06] Tracy Hoth: Oh, I love that. That’s such a good way to look at it. Okay, so they need to go get this webinar. Come to the webinar or get

[00:37:15] Mel Selcho: the replay.

If you register, then you’ll get the replay and the matrix will come with it. I show you how to plug your priorities in and how to plug the projects in to see whether they are going to support that priority or not.

[00:37:29] Tracy Hoth: Perfect. Okay. Is there anything else you want to share that you think would be helpful, and then also, I mean, when you have, is there some takeaway, like, what am I going to do first?

For sure, I’m going to go get the webinar and sign up for that, get the matrix, but what’s their one action step that you would recommend someone take? But if there’s something else you want to share first, go ahead and we’ll do that first.

[00:37:55] Mel Selcho: I really want everyone to be reignited about the work that, that they are doing in the world.

That is the thing that is the most important to me. And the reason I say I work with disruptors is because what you have to contribute to the work that you do in the world, whether you’re paid for it or not paid for it, whether it’s your own business or someone else’s business, only you can contribute that.

And so I want one of these strategies to ignite An enthusiasm for that work in only the way that, that you can do it for your listeners. So that is the takeaway. Choose the strategy that sounds the easiest or the most fun or whatever it, whatever lights you up the most to what you were to put you into

[00:38:41] Tracy Hoth: this world the most.

That’s such an encouragement too, and it, it’s, it’s almost the why, I mean, it makes the why that you’re here. Be so much more important because your gift, your uniqueness is what is going to be different and there are people out there that need that. So it’s so encouraging when you say that. Yeah.

[00:39:02] Mel Selcho: And that again, I learned from my cancer journey.

Like thankfully people had been researching this. And, and there were books I could look at, and coaches I could hire, and what if one of them had been like, it’s too hard, or I didn’t get the right, I didn’t find the right medicine the first time we did the trial, or I, I just think about the world. There’s somebody in this world that needs what you can give.

And so light yourself up. It’s your job to bring the thing that lights yourself up so that you can keep giving it.

[00:39:33] Tracy Hoth: That’s a good thinking back on our example, but I never got to 10 clients. I’ve only, I only got one more client doing that, you know, just keep going. You’re going to get there and you’re creating these assets and creating that impact as you follow the plan and use these strategies to grow and to fulfill what your goal is.

So, so fun, Mel, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sharing this. You had so many good examples of how you brought fun because that’s what you were bringing into it. I don’t want to, and just share a few of the ways you brought fun into your cancer journey. Share a few ways you bring fun into your business.

I’d be curious about that too. Okay, perfect. Because that’s your gift.

[00:40:22] Mel Selcho: Yeah, so I decided if you can bring fun into home inspection, you can bring fun to cancer. And so, to cancer treatment. And I really want to be clear because I right now have flipped the odds. I now have an 87 percent survival rate.

I would say that’s accidental excellence. My result was I lived, I expanded the width of my life, not necessarily the length, cause I don’t know how we expand the length of our life. If I did, I would, I would preach it, but I expanded the width of my life. And so I think about that with business. How can we expand the width of our business?

One of the ways that I bring fun to business is I bring the most me I can to my business. You notice today I’m wearing a sparkly tiger dress and I am like, you know what? It doesn’t matter what my dad or my mom would think about this dress at a networking event. If the people that are my people will be attracted to me being the most me I can.

I can be the most me by having the most fun. I really do love in person networking. And so I go with the thought of who does this person know? This person probably knows a lot of people and I want to know this person. And it makes it so much fun for me to be able to do, to be able to do that. I also think of when I was in chemo.

In chemo, I brought a disco ball. Because sparkle is my favorite color and it just lit up the room. I was so thankful for the people who were there, honestly. And I bring that gratitude to the people that are doing good work in business. I cheer them on, even if they’re my competitors, because that’s, what’s really fun for me.

That’s one of the things I help my clients do is figure out what is it they want out of their business and how can they bring more of it while they’re building, building the business is as important as doing the business. And if both of those are impactful, then marketing becomes fun. Marketing’s flirting.

It’s fun.

[00:42:24] Tracy Hoth: Aww. That’s so fun. That is fun. Like that, even the way you say it just makes me excited about it. Building the business is about doing. What did you say? It’s important.

[00:42:35] Mel Selcho: A lot of times we’re like, if only I could just be coaching people, then I would be having an impact. Maybe. But what if Finding the people, people that need coaching, the accidental excellence that comes from all of that content creation, all the people you help that you never even knew that you helped.

What if that is equally as important as the actual coaching that you do? How would you think about it differently?

[00:42:58] Tracy Hoth: Hmm. So good. I love it. Okay. Thank you so, so much. If you want to hear her whole story and all the fun things she brought into chemo and how to bring that into your life, the recording is always in Organized Life Academy.

You can get in there for 2025 and watch that replay in there.  I appreciate you being here. Thank you so much. Everybody go get her, her matrix, listen to that webinar and learn how to do that. It was so fun being with you, Tracy. You have great tips. Thanks Mel. Wait, if you’re finding this podcast useful, you must check out the Organized Coach Academy.

It’s my course where I walk you through every step to get your business organized, to get yourself organized, to save money and time to prepare to hire someone to do all the things that you want to do in your business with ease. Check that out at simplysquaredaway.com/oca. Also, I’m sure you’ve heard this a million times, but I would love it.

It’s my way of knowing podcast. If you leave a written review, I have lots of freebies for you. They’re linked in the show notes. You can find him in my bio on Instagram at @TracyHoth and until next week, have a beautiful day.