Melyssa Griffin is a former high school teacher turned entrepreneur who loves teaching people how to live an abundant and limitless life.
Within 3 years, Melyssa turned her hobby blog into a multimillion-dollar company. She now coaches entrepreneurs [including SHE ROCKED IT founder/host Karen Gross] on growing their companies from the inside out — meaning, “the more work you do to reprogram the ineffective beliefs and stories you adopted in your early years, the more success and joy you’ll feel as a business owner and human.”
In this episode, Melyssa shares how she developed her philosophy of aligned abundance after recovering from work burnout; why her in-demand mastermind program is now focused on elevating womxn entrepreneurs; and how she rocks it by following what’s joyful and FUN.
Links from the episode:
- Melyssa Griffin website: https://www.melyssagriffin.com/
- Aligned Abundance Mastermind: https://www.alignedabundancemastermin…
- Melyssa’s podcast Limitless Life™: https://www.melyssagriffin.com/podcast/
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Melyssa Griffin Interview Transcript:
SHE ROCKED IT / KAREN GROSS: Hey, rock stars. It’s Karen. And I’m so glad you’re here with us at SHE ROCKED IT. And I’m really glad you’re here for this conversation with Melyssa Griffin. She’s an incredible entrepreneur who started her career as a high school teacher then became a successful blogger and now runs a multi-million dollar company focused on helping other entrepreneurs find aligned abundance. And I know this firsthand because I was part of Melyssa’s mastermind program for entrepreneurs last year in 2020. In the midst of the lockdown, I took a big leap and joined this mastermind program and it completely transformed my life. And in fact, the, SHE ROCKED IT vision was born in that program. So we’re going to talk about that today. And I’m also going to get Melyssa to share some of her inside stories on how she pivoted her life to run this incredible company that teaches other entrepreneurs how to find aligned abundance, how she’s created such incredible online courses, and how she looks within in order to create balance in her life and her business. So without further ado, let’s hear how Melyssa Griffin ROCKS IT. (01:42) I am thrilled to see you. I was literally counting the minutes until this moment. It’s awesome to see your face, as per usual.
MELYSSA GRIFFIN: (01:49) So great to see you too.
SHE ROCKED IT: (01:52) So great to see you. I just think, Melyssa you’re so prolific. Over the years, you’ve created so many online programs. How do you get such motivation to create, um, such an abundance of beautiful things in the world?
MELYSSA GRIFFIN: (02:05) That’s an interesting question. I’ve always followed what feels good for me. So I, I try not to push and there have been moments in my life where I have pushed and like done things for the sake of doing, but I really try to do things when I feel the, the download of inspiration and feeling like next right step for me. Um, and letting it be fun and joyful. So when I create programs, especially now, it’s always from this place of like, “does this feel joyful and aligned for me?” And so if you look at my path and the timeline of my life in general, and especially in my business, it’s been a lot of just little stepping stones that almost didn’t make sense, but that led me to the next right thing and the next right thing. So it almost gets less about motivation and more about just following my truth in each moment and, and my joy and what felt right and fun and, and good.
SHE ROCKED IT: (02:56) I love that so much. And I was thinking about the words that you use to describe your mastermind now, which is the “aligned abundance” mastermind. And I was actually thinking how revolutionary that concept is, especially for women. Um, in two parts. One is I think, claiming alignment as a woman and then claiming abundance, vocally stepping towards both those concepts. I think as women, we tend to feel sometimes a little guilty for wanting to be aligned for doing what’s best for us, for listening to that inner voice instead of maybe putting others first and others’ needs first. So I wanted to throw that at you. And then I also want to throw at you that I think claiming abundance and claiming wealth and claiming, “Hey, I actually want to, you know, be financially successful”. I think there’s a revolutionary aspect to that too. So I was wondering if you’d pondered that. And if there’s a reason that you’re specifically stepping towards focused, focusing on women entrepreneurs, because in our program, it was actually, there was an amazing men in the program, but I noticed you’re making a shift a little more consciously towards women.
MELYSSA GRIFFIN: (03:54) So yeah. So let’s start with that question about women
SHE ROCKED IT: (04:00) There’s a lot there. Let’s unpack all of those things in 30 minutes now.
MELYSSA GRIFFIN: Um, (04:04) so my, my choice to, to work exclusively with women first time, I’ve done that since starting my business. And I just felt like, um, it was almost entirely women already, and it felt like having this sacred sisterhood circle was really important, especially when we’re talking about alignment and abundance. And I’ll talk about abundance in a second, cause I think it’s a lot more than just financial abundance, but, um, having that sacred sisterhood where it feels vulnerable and intimate and connected and safe, that’s a really big word that came to me in a safe, because there’s conversations… And I love the men that we’ve had in our group, they’re phenomenal…conversations that get to happen in groups of women that are different and they’re nuanced because they’re exclusively with women. And so I wanted to create something like that where women felt safe to come together and be their full, vibrant women selves in whatever way that means for them. Um, but in this safe, sacred space and community together.
SHE ROCKED IT: Yes. (05:04) And I will tell you all, I did a lot of crying in Melyssa’s program, but good crying, like really letting a lot of stuff out. So yes, I think you do need to feel safe and I completely get that.
MELYSSA GRIFFIN: (05:16) Yeah. And I know you talked about abundance too, and you know, I think it’s so important for women to have abundance. And I think it’s important for everyone to have abundance. And when I think of abundance, I feel like the predominant way of thinking about it is this financial place of like how much money is in your bank account. But the most abundant life doesn’t necessarily have to be one that’s fueled by money, or that has extra zeros in your checking account. It could be one where you’re living off of less, but you feel abundant because you’re joyful in your life. You get to live your values on a daily basis. And sometimes that takes a lot less money financially than we think it does. So I feel like infusing that into conversations about money is so important because otherwise, we’ll end up on this like marathon towards the finish line of what we think we need. (06:04): And then we get there and we’re like, “this sucks because this isn’t the actual life that I wanted to create and live because maybe we weren’t living in alignment or weren’t living our values on the way to that destination.” And so it’s like, how can I design my life around living in the energy of abundance? How can…I think the energy of abundance, I’ve been pondering this lately is the energy of joy and a presence. Like how much presence can you have in your life and how much joy do you allow yourself to feel? And if you’re fully joyful and present, I feel like that is the most abundant place anyone could be.
SHE ROCKED IT: (06:39) That’s so beautiful. And you know, you’ve been very honest in your, um, in your podcast, you have a fabulous podcast, Limitless Life in other podcasts, you’ve been part of, you know, as a guest, you’ve spoken about your own, uh, dare I say, breakdown. Where you had to actually step away from your business at one point because of burnout, um, and reset and reset what you really wanted to do. And I feel like a lot of people are at that breaking point right now. Um, we’re, we’re working maybe more than ever sometimes because there’s no boundaries now between work and life. And so I think you, you speak from a place of real deep truth. And I just want people to know that. And maybe could you shed light on how that experience informed maybe the retooling of your life and your business?
MELYSSA GRIFFIN:(07:24) Yeah. Yeah. It was really like my rock bottom moment in a lot of ways because so much of my life was structured around being this high achiever, having my identity wrapped up into what title I was holding, how many people I was leading, how much money my business was earning and just feeling like those were the things that gave me worth in the world. And so in 2018 and you know, this had been brewing for a long time, but in 2018, like came to a head where I got physically burnt out to the point where I just couldn’t work anymore. I couldn’t do normal things. And I had to, based on my doctor’s orders, he’s like, “you need to stop working. You’re stressing yourself out too much”. And so I took a six-month sabbatical from my business where I just didn’t work and I healed physically, but more importantly, I feel, I healed emotionally and mentally and spiritually and all of the other ways of healing.(08:13) Um, but I, it was really like the starting point of that redesigning that story inside of myself. But yeah, it’s interesting when you take away the stimulus of the thing that is the fuel for your identity and that identity, that’s not necessarily serving you, that’s bringing you pain and keeping you in a limiting story. Uh, for me, it, it was really hard because it felt like it was just taking away a lot of who I thought I was. And so when I started taking away at first, who I thought I was, it was really difficult. And I was like, “who am I without all of these things?”
SHE ROCKED IT:(08:47) Yeah. We’re programmed to associate our worth with certain kinds of success. I think even now, sometimes when I took a slower morning still kind of like, oh, is this okay? Like I’m looking around, like, who’s watching me to make sure I’m out of bed at a certain time. Like this is hard to deprogram ourselves. And you think a lot about mindset in the work you do.
MELYSSA GRIFFIN: (09:04) Absolutely. Yeah, it is. It’s a, it’s a process and there’s a lot of resistance that comes up when we’re shifting an identity. So yeah, at first it was difficult. And then I started leaning more into it and found a lot of gifts in the stillness and the rewiring and restructuring of a story. And it didn’t all shift and change after those six months. And I think that’s really important to share too because sometimes we can get in our heads if we think we’re not healing fast enough or like the story still pops up a year later. And we’re like, “I thought I worked on that. Like, why is that still here?” Um, and it’ll still pop up from time to time now. I’m just really good at catching it. And I don’t feed it the way that I used to, but it’s a process when we’re unraveling a part of ourselves that’s not serving who we want to be in the world.
SHE ROCKED IT: (09:52) I appreciate that. But I want to talk about just alignment, um, in one’s own life as an entrepreneur, because I feel like as women we’re taking on an unconventional path when we choose entrepreneurship in certain ways, and I think you and I, you know, may I get personal for a moment? We are unmarried. We don’t have children. We have pets. Yay! I’m a proud cat mom. But like, I still feel there’s some resistance to women who take unconventional paths in their lives and really step into their passion if it’s their business, if it’s their lives and that’s alignment, I think too. But I do think that society pushes back. Have you felt kind of push back at times where you’ve had to raise your voice and your truth against maybe some societal expectations of what a woman even now is supposed to be?
MELYSSA GRIFFIN: (10:41) Hmmm. That’s a really interesting question. Um, I feel like I’ve been blessed in certain ways to have parents that were both semi-entrepreneurial. And so I had this model of them doing it their own way. And then, uh, building not really businesses, they’re more, service-based, one’s a hairstylist, one’s an attorney and, but they’ve done it their own way and they followed their own path. And I think that was really, um, you know, I didn’t even realize it until maybe a few years ago that they were doing that, that they could have worked at a salon or could have worked at a law firm, but they didn’t.
SHE ROCKED IT: And it’s interesting.
MELYSSA GRIFFIN: Yeah. It is
SHE ROCKED IT: (11:19) It’s in your DNA that entrepreneurship thing. That’s interesting. I didn’t actually know that.
MELYSSA GRIFFIN: (11:21) Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they probably both wouldn’t call themselves entrepreneurs, but they’ve followed their own path. Um, and I think that’s really interesting to have models, whether it’s your parents or people you follow, or friends or anybody expanders in your life that can show you it’s possible to live a different path. And I think, you know, all the things that you’re bringing up as women to where we feel like we need to start a family, you need to get married. You need to like do all the things that women are supposed to do and be quiet and not have a voice and not shine. I think a lot of those stories are being restructured in our society now. And women do have more of a space to take up space and do what they want. Um, and I totally believe that that’s possible. But yeah, I think if that story is there and it feels like you’re going against the grain as a woman, living your truth, then looking for those expanders in your life who can show you that it’s not only possible, but it’s like, it’s who you are. If you’re thinking of doing life in an unconventional way, then, then that’s who you are at your core. And so you get to follow that even if it feels like there’s resistance because of that old conditioning.
SHE ROCKED IT: (12:31) I love that. And the word expanders is a word you just mentioned. It’s a word I learned in the mastermind program, it’s people who really, I think expand your scope of what’s possible and push you maybe to what’s possible for you. Are there any women you want to call out in particular who have inspired you to live your truth, to raise your voice, to live in alignment that you might want to mention?
MELYSSA GRIFFIN: Mm. (12:51) I mean, I always think of the women who are closest to me that I just adore so much. Like people like my mom, I love my mom. She’s just like a free spirit. So creative. Um, I just love her so much. And some of my friends, these gorgeous, amazing women who just live life on their own terms and are so filled with joy and love. Like that’s something that really speaks to me about the women that I, I, um, I feel inspired by is that not only are they following their own path and carving what that path looks like and healing themselves on the way there, but they’re also doing it with like the utmost love and grace for everyone around them. And I think that’s a really special quality, so not only follow our path but to use that, to be of service and love to the people that drop into our path along the way.
SHE ROCKED IT: (13:44) I love that. You know, it’s, um, it’s interesting. You reminded me, I, how do we find these types of women in our lives or other people who support us in our voice? And I felt like when I stepped into the mastermind program, I was stepping into people like a community. I already knew it felt familiar. Like, I dunno, it just felt kindred. So do you think that by raising your voice, you are actually kind of bringing people in that are aligned with you?
MELYSSA GRIFFIN: (14:06) 100%, 100%. It’s like if you have any desire in the world, then putting yourself out there and putting that desire out there is only going to bring more of it to you. So I think sometimes we shy away from actually speaking up for what it is we stand for, who we are, what we want, especially what we want, what we desire as women. That’s a big one. Um, being able to name that and claim that, but yeah, putting it out there and allowing the people who are right for that message to discover you and amplify, whatever it is that you’re sharing and you’re passionate about. Um, and knowing that you have the power to do that, too. It’s like if I have a desire that I want to create, I get to be the leader of the ship to create it, instead of hoping that it manifests some way, you know what I mean?
SHE ROCKED IT: (14:54) Absolutely. You know, you are, um, in terms of raising one’s voice, you are just an excellent, in addition to all the things you do with the mastermind and the podcast support, you have all these classes. And I just have to say, you’re an excellent educator. I know your roots are in education. Do you recognize that in yourself? Do you recognize that you have a very powerful voice as an educator? I don’t know if that’s from your years doing that back in the day, but the way you break things down, the way you explain things, even just your, the way you speak, your speaking voice as an educator, I just find very soothing. So just your educational voice, in addition to being just an inspiration and a mentor in my entrepreneurship mentor, your that’s a huge part of, I think your gift.
MELYSSA GRIFFIN: (15:34) Hmm. Thank you. Yeah, I am. I really received that. I appreciate that. Yeah. And I feel like I’ve always been a teacher. I’m like the teacher archetype, even as a kid, I remember I had a beta fish, you know, the, like you fighting fish and I would hold up flashcards because I wanted to teach it math. And I remember my brother, who’s four years younger than me. I would like color-code his books and teach him how to read and like create lesson plans. I remember when I was like nine, I had a teacher’s lesson plan book. I just loved teaching, not just for the teaching aspect, but I feel like to be really good at teaching there’s this, this like empathetic perception that you need to have about how humans operate and learn in the world. Uh, and it’s nuanced and it’s not just like, here’s the information cause people don’t learn that way. People learn through, um, something that I think is more subtle, like understanding the thought process of what would hold them back and then breaking that down so that they can move forward. And that is what I really enjoy about teaching. And now even more so about coaching, um, is just the nuances of humanity really, and helping to reflect that back to people.
SHE ROCKED IT: (16:47) And so what gave you that initial courage to go from kind of teaching? I think it was high school. I want to say to school being middle school and high school to, you know, you had a successful blog and graphic design career to like really scaling up and teaching people around the world. What gave you the courage to say, “I’m going to raise my voice in a really big way like that?”
MELYSSA GRIFFIN: (17:08) Um, it almost wasn’t even from courage, it was just from a place of necessity inside of myself, like coming from this place of, um, “I have to do this”, like there’s a part of me and not have to because I have to subscribe to somebody else’s expectations, but it didn’t feel like maybe you relate to this, but I feel like this a lot where I’ll get to a point with something where there’s no other option. It’s just, “this is what’s meant for me, this feels right to me, this feels like my next step”. And so I could either keep doing this other thing that I really am not enjoying anymore and I know it is expired in my life and on my path, or I could do this thing that who knows what’s going to, but it feels so right. And so why not? Um, and I’m, I’m quite an experimenter, so I often do the why not decision and just follow that. (17:59) And I, I don’t always know if it’s gonna work out. Uh, when I launched my first online course, I remember like barely eating, leading up to it. Cause I thought I would have no money after launching that course. I did not think it was going to work at all. And then it did. And then I just kept following, you know, what felt good and what felt right. And it eventually led to being able to scale the business. But yeah, just, um, just following the things that are feeling good in the moment and allowing that to inform my path.
SHE ROCKED IT: (18:30) Wow. That’s the real, I really appreciate those stories. No, I love you. I’m like, that’s, you know, we see the end product, but to hear the journey and that, I appreciate you sharing all of that, Melyssa, that’s really powerful and you don’t know what the outcome is going to be necessarily, but why not kind of enjoy the process and that the alchemy who knows, you know, so you’ve been such an inspiration that way.
MELYSSA GRIFFIN: (18:52) Yeah. Yeah. And like having fun with it. And again, what we were talking about at the very beginning of abundance being presence and joy. And so instead of always thinking of “how can I create this thing, that’s going to be super successful and give me all of the results that I desire”, thinking instead of “how can I be present in this moment” to when I’m creating, “how can I find the joy in this experience of this thing that I’m building and being open to the surprise and delight of life and the universe of it coming and manifesting in a totally different way”. Um, and maybe on even a different timeline, but finding the joy and the presence and abundance in the now moment, because Now moment is literally your whole life. That’s all we have it. And so the more that we can enjoy that and be present to it, the more that we’ll feel abundant on our way to the destination and when we reach it.
SHE ROCKED IT: (19:43) Well, amen. And I’m so grateful for you raising your voice and taking that plunge because what happened was years later, uh, you crossed my path. Somehow. I think your business caught my attention was an ad. It was something I felt aligned with the, the beautiful message that you were putting into the world. And then you changed my life and encouraged me to launch SHE ROCKED IT through your incredible program, your wisdom, the coaches in your program, the community you have drawn toward you. So I just want to say, thank you deeply from my heart for raising your voice because you’ve changed so many lives, including my own. I could talk to you for so long, but I will ask for one final question before we depart, uh, sad to leave you. But if you could leave us with one tip, just ONE TIP TO ROCK IT in our own careers, our callings what’s that one tip you might want to share?
MELYSSA GRIFFIN: (20:33) Hmm. Yeah. I would say, figure out what your truth is and then live it, live it every day and you’ll feel resistance on the path to living your, because you’re probably so conditioned to living someone else’s truth or society’s truth, your culture’s truth or your family’s truth that it’ll feel weird and uncomfortable, but you get to do it anyways. You get to keep going through the muck of figuring out what that feels like to live your truth, and it will feel so good. And so freeing, the more that you walked out, a path that’s yours and no one else’s.
SHE ROCKED IT: (21:15) There it is friends. There it is. And thank you for encouraging all of us and me to live my truth and sing it out loud, proud. Melyssa, just so much love for you. That’s all I can say. It’s great to be with you have a beautiful rest of your day.
MELYSSA GRIFFIN: (21:33) You too.
SHE ROCKED IT:
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