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Tony:

Welcome. I'm your host Tony DUrso. I interview some of the most successful people in the world, and I thank you for joining us. This show is dedicated to helping you turn your vision into reality and here's a successful entrepreneur who provides insights and guidance you can use to move along your vision path, and you can listen to all of my shows on most podcast platforms. If you have Apple podcasts - AKA iTunes - please subscribe and if you like what you hear, a kind review really makes my day. Now before we get going, here's a big thank you to some amazing sponsors of our show. Please stay tuned for an important message from Ancestry® who checked me out, and I'll tell you more about that shortly. Coming up is a significant message from Dollar Shave Club® who provides the right items for me to get the most amazing shaves. Stay tuned for that just ahead, and listen for a vital message from Zebit® who has a radically better way to shop online, to buy what you need and pay over time. Check out what I found. More info on them just ahead so please stay tuned. Today's shows with Melinda J Kelly - embracing the power of questions. Let's see what we can learn today. Here's some info on Melinda. With a successful career in her family business, it would have been easy to continue as is. But a combination of major events derailed those plans, leading to a reassessment of Melinda’s life as she had known and planned it. Suddenly, there were new questions. Lots of questions. At the end of this interview, I'm going to do a summary recap of what we went over so stay tuned for that. Here we go. Welcome to the show, Melinda. It's so great to have you. I know it's been a little bit of time and I am so delighted to have this interview with you, talking about embracing the power of questions.

Melinda:

Thank you so very much. I'm absolutely delighted to be here.

Tony:

Melinda, you've been through quite a bit as I believe most of us entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, small business owners in the audience. So, I like to start at the beginning, first things first. Can you tell us - how did it all start for you? What's your backstory?

Melinda:

Well, my backstory is I come from a group of people that love words so it's not surprising that we would end up into business counseling and publishing, and the family business called to me and I went into it. And for anyone who's in a family business, you have my respect and my condolences. There is no greater working relationship than when it is all wonderful, and there's nothing more crazy-making than the fact you're working with family. And so, anyone able to bridge that lovely adventure, I give you so much credit. I loved what I did. I loved the fact that my father and I had a very wonderful relationship. It was very much a true family business and did it forever and ever. It was just effortless. I knew what I was doing. I loved what I was doing, and when my father became ill, there were things that you started to question. And when my father passed, I decided I wanted to continue and take the business on and to where we had always been very revolutionary and on the cutting edge, technology caught up with us and we weren't suddenly the ones on the new frontier. We had taken our publications into an online subscription service at the end of the '90s, something most people hadn't thought of and had done a lot of things that were very much ahead of their time, but the joy of technology is it does catch up to you. I had to ask myself a really tough question which was, am I doing this because I still love it? Am I doing it because I've always done it, or am I just doing it? And that was truly the beginning of a whole world of questions and answers and adventures and people and conversations and a journey to where I am now.

Tony:

Very interesting. Melinda, did this start with a vision of what you saw yourself doing in the future, or a purpose or rekindling or finding or revitalizing a purpose that you have? I like to kind of go into your vision path on this.

Melinda:

I realized that I needed to embrace... I'd always been told I should write. And whenever anybody says, Oh, you should do that. I think our natural reaction is, Oh, I'm not sure I can do that. And I dabbled with it throughout the years and I had done some things and entered some contests and won some things, but it was always sort of like that little talent you didn't discuss. And I realized as I was looking at what did I want to do? Did I want to reinvent the business? Did I have the energy to do that, and who was I going to do it for? Was it for me, or was it for the memory of my family? Memory of my father? I started to look at some of my old dreams and my hopes, and I thought, you know what? I would like to try writing, and it was this wonderful moment of, oh, I could do that and this equally terrifying moment of oh, you could do that. And so it was reconciling the hope and the vision and the dream and the belief to go forward.

Tony:

I like that. That's powerful. What is the vision that you saw yourself doing in the future that made and brought this whole transformation about for you?

Melinda:

I had originally started writing a nonfiction and just sweet stories that were - I don't know - I guess that appealed to me, so I thought they would appeal to the women of the book club. But this little one came to me that needed to be written, which is not non-fiction, it's very ... not, I'm sorry, I was writing fiction. Got confused. And this is nonfiction. This just wanted to be written. And I think in large part, as I went through my journey, I was incredibly fortunate to meet incredible people, generous people, but yet I realized that there were things going on where I wasn't letting myself go forward, and as I spoke with friends and others, I realized a lot of what I was doing, everyone was doing, and so it seems sort of greedy to not share what I had discovered. And so, my hope is to share my experience and that that will help others to have a better time on their road. I say none of us like to stub our toes, so if I can stop you from stubbing your toe, I'm all for it.

Tony:

And I understand your purpose to write, that may be a bigger purpose, but below that may be something like wanting to help others or wanting to educate others. What would you say is that core, underlying purpose that you have?

Melinda:

Oh, I would say to help others, to share with others. I so believe that there is so much knowledge and wisdom, but we don't often take the time to share it with one another. And it's a book, a webinar, conversation, a lecture - there is so much that is out there available to us if we just take the time and listen or know it's there. And so, to be able to help someone else on their journey, to help someone else to find out what's going on with their life, to be able to say I've been here and I'd like to tell you I just sailed through it perfectly, and I really would like to tell you that. But no, I had ups and downs and questions and moments I thought, are you nuts? What are you doing? But that is the journey of anything we've ever done. I mean, you can think about when you first learned to read, which none of us can remember because it's too painful, but we thought we were brilliant and then we couldn't get a word. Anything we've ever done and attempted has always got this ebb and flow of suddenly you get it and suddenly you feel you're lost. But as we get older, we forget about that, and we naturally assume that we should just be able to effortlessly do this and there is stuff that's really effortless in the world, except maybe breathing.

Tony:

Totally hear you on that. It's amazing when we can do something and just do it easy, then we know we've got the right thing because we can do it because it just flows. And for me, my purpose is something so strong. I'll get up in the morning. I'll work on every day, and it doesn't matter if I get paid or not. I just love doing it. It feels right. It is right. And it just revitalizes me when I work on it, which is doing my show. I just absolutely love it. And it's just so amazing is that the purpose starts first. It's not like people pay you. You start doing what you love and necessarily for me, there was no money in immediate sight. It was just I loved doing it. But what's amazing though is income and survival and abundance follows when you're doing your purpose. I think that's one of my own personal big takeaways, and I totally get what you're saying on that.

Melinda:

And I would agree with you, and yet you're doing exactly what I was saying is sharing knowledge and wisdom and helping others and someone just has to take a moment and listen, to discover you and know all that is available, just from taking a little time to enjoy the afternoon with you.

Tony:

Exactly. And Melinda, what long-term objective - some people may call it a goal, but I'm talking over a couple of years - what did you see yourself looking to accomplish when you made your foray into this industry? You wanted to write, but what was it because now you're an amazing coach. So what was that objective that you were looking to achieve?

Melinda:

I would say that it is that sense of being able to help someone find their path. There is nothing more rewarding in the world than when someone is looking at 5 options and they're all wonderful and they don't know where they want to go, and helping them choose what is best for them. Not listening to what everyone tells you, but being able to tap into the trueness and the authenticity within yourself and to help someone else. It may be fine tuning. It may be throwing everything out and starting anew, but helping someone find what's going to give their life fulfillment. And you know, when you were saying about abundance, one of the things I broach in my book is that we look at success in terms of money only, and that is such a limited way of seeing life because abundance are all the things no one can pay for. Abundance is the friend that stops by to see how you are. Abundance is your life being filled with beautiful people and experiences.

Tony:

Abundance stops by to check in and say, Hey, how's it going? I love it. And it's so true because it just comes. To me, it's the easiest way to make money is to find what you love to do and just start and the money just comes and follows you in tow. Absolutely. Now on your journey, Melinda, which we're still learning more about it and we're going to yet speak about embracing the power of questions. I like to know, what did you find most surprising as you started on your journey to follow your purpose line and accomplish your major objective?

Melinda:

I would think I'm not alone on this, but that failure to trust that we're in the right place, that as we start something new, we come up with a million reasons to pick at it and destroy it, not believe it. And I honestly feel it's that self-protection mechanism because we're so scared, and change - even when it's good change - is scary. And so, for me, the biggest, I guess, demon or obstacle was to exhale and go, it'll be okay. At one point I sat down, I thought, well, releasing my book and even if this ends up with everyone gets for Christmas, I've got one heck of a wonderful story to tell people.

Tony:

And why not? Everyone should get it for Christmas because it is so personal. It is you. I think it's more important and better than a card. As a matter of fact, cards even cost more money than our own books.

Melinda:

That's when you know you're really loved, when you get them in the mail.

Tony:

Let's see here. You're a coach. You help people. We're still going to go on that but I like to know - what about change? People run into change. We hear about embracing our change, but change sometimes is not so good, but we can make it good.

Melinda:

I really feel change gets a bum rap because if you think about it, every day is a change.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead the chat continues with Melinda J Kelly, embracing the power of questions, but first it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

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Tony:

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Tony:

All right, we're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is with Melinda J Kelly -embracing the power of questions. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this, and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. Melinda says "like most people, I rolled my eyes when I heard the phrase "the crossroads". Life has a way of making you eat your words. While there were three elements in my life that all seemed to crash at the same time, the most painful one was my professional life." All right. And now back to the chat with Melinda.

Melinda:

We say we like routine, but from the moment you leave your front door, you have no idea what the traffic's going to be, if you're going to make it to work on time, what's going to confront you in your daily work life. There's what we think and there's what arrives on the desk. And so, our life is nothing but change, but we don't focus on the constants. The constants of I have my home, I have my family, I have my friends, I have my health. Those are the ones we want to make sure don't change or they improve. But we become so obsessed on anything being a change is bad, and there are a lot of great changes. I mean, Daylight Savings Time. You would think that when that happens it's the end of the world, but yet we all sit there a few weeks later and say, Oh, isn't this a beautiful summer evening and I love this extra time. And conversely, as winter comes, we all grumble for the first couple of days and then we're like Oh, isn't this lovely? We get to tuck into the house early and don't you feel cozy? We like the changes that come to us, but yet we fight them the entire time.

Tony:

This is Melinda J Kelly - embracing the power of questions. You can find her at melindajkelly.com and I'll spell that. Melinda. We know that word. MELINDA. The letter J as in Jack, and Kelly is KELLY. melindajkelly.com. Melinda, you're a coach and some of us have coaches. I have a mentor. I call them mentors. Some of us have consultants. Why should we have a coach? Now, this is a question for you to help educate the audience. Why have a coach instead of just go hang out with your friends and discuss your issues?

Melinda:

Oh, that is such a wonderful question. And thank you because we get caught up on the language and a coach or a mentor or a colleague, someone who's been there to help us is something everyone has always had, but we've just retitled it and people go, Oh, I need a coach. Our friends love us and they too don't want to see anything change. So, if you come to them and say, you know, I'm thinking about taking this class, or I'm thinking about going back to school, I'm thinking about this change, they're caught in two worlds. The first is, Oh, that's great but the second is, if you do that, will you still have time for me? Are we still going to be able to go to our Saturday movies? There's a selfishness we don't always recognize that is going to flavor whatever advice or suggestions we give. The other is our friends know us as they've known us, and sometimes they don't see how our lives may have changed or how we may have grown. And so, they may be looking at you with the eyes of a childhood friend, not seeing you as the adult you've become. So, no matter how much they love us, they're giving us their heartfelt advice, but it may not be the right or even the best advice. And that's why a coach is a mentor. I mean, if you were trying to perfect your golf or your tennis swing, you wouldn't think twice about going to a coach. If you're in business and you're getting horrible results in your advertising, you wouldn't think twice about going to a consultant to find out what you're doing, how your message is off. But oddly, we think that with life, we should just know what it's all about. And yet everything in life is a learning experience, no matter where you start. And a coach is someone who listens to what you're telling them, but also is listening for what your heart is telling them. There's this story we give everybody, but there are also things that come up during that, that express things you're hoping for, or moments that maybe you would like to change. And to have someone in your life whose only focus is to listen to you and help you make the most constructive, well thought out decisions for yourself is a very unique and rare gift to give to yourself. Way too often, we think we should just power through it, and all we do is hurt ourselves because we lose time and we take ourselves down because something is bothering us and we don't know what it is and we can't fix it and it keeps taking us down. Going to someone to help you is just a smart thing to do. It gives you a new outlook, and even if you decide, I don't like them, they're just full of it, they made you think.

Tony:

Absolutely right, and the coach is more impartial. He doesn't really care so much and I don't mean it that way, but being friends is not the ultimate for the coach. Having you be successful, having you get through a barrier, through a hurdle, that's the ultimate, whether it's painful or not. Whereas a friend may want to be easy and not necessarily give you the information that you want because the friend likes you and cares, doesn't want to hurt your feelings or whatever. So I believe there's more impartiality with the coach as well as you were mentioning, and that leads to better results in what you are trying to obtain or accomplish.

Melinda:

Most definitely. I will often say when a friend asks me something, well, I know what you'd like me to say, but do you want to hear what I think I should say? And we will both laugh because quite often we know the answer. It's within us, but we're reticent to accept that we could really know the answer. And so that's why we want to try it out on a lot of different people.

Tony:

Melinda, when you do work with someone, what are some of the challenges or ... let's just go to the top. What's the most challenging about working with someone?

Melinda:

I would say it's staying clear on what is best for them and keeping the distance. I like to say, I want everyone to have their everything. I just want it to be your everything, and there's a reason people live in tiny houses. I may think they're a little crazy, but I see them and they're the happiest campers in town. And there are people that want to live in these huge, huge homes and they're the happiest people in town. That's their everything. It's not what I think you should have. It's what you really want. It's what's going to fulfill you and keeping the distance that this is, you're helping someone almost like a tour guide through this little rough spot, when done right feels so incredibly rewarding.

Tony:

I like the tour guide analogy. I like that. The tour guide is going to show you the best sites and the best places so that you get the best out of your vacation or your trip or what have you. And that is what I see a good coach, good mentor, a good consultant able to do is guide the person to the best of what the person needs to get, to see, to accomplish.

Melinda:

Exactly, without hopefully finding any of the pitfalls, falling off the track, getting lost on a dead-end street. Like I said, it's all about the time. You can take the time to get lost and confused, or you can have someone show you the time of your life.

Tony:

Perhaps this brings us to the title of our show - embracing the power of questions. How does that fit in? And let's go dig into this, please.

Melinda:

Oh, I absolutely love questions and our entire world is all about questions as infants, because everything is new and as toddlers for putting everything into context. And as we go through life, we start getting told to be quiet and stop asking questions. And to me, that's very unfortunate because questions are what open the doors for everything. Questions are, do I like playing sports? Do I like learning music? Do I like? These are all the things that are going to make you become the adult you become. As we get older, everyone's Oh, you should be a doctor, an attorney, a plumber, an electrician, and we listen to them because they love us and we think they know what's best. But if we aren't taught to question who am I? What are the things I really like? It doesn't do you any good to work in New York City if you like being out on the open plains in Montana. You might be good at your job, but you're never really going to be fully successful because your heart's longing for something else. As we go through, we often take the first job because everyone's get the job, get the job. But we don't ask, is this good for my career path, or will this just help me pay off my loans? And so, by not asking questions throughout our life, we can find that we haven't gone down roads we would have loved to have gone through, or we may have made choices not based on what we really wanted, but on what other people thought would be best for us. So questions engage us daily at our inner core.

Tony:

I agree with you to a degree, but sometimes too many questions just interferes or gets in the way. And especially first thing in the morning for me, no questions. Let me have my coffee.

Melinda:

But that's the question. Can I talk to you yet?

Tony:

That would be the question.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead the chat continues with Melinda J Kelly, embracing the power of questions, but first it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

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Tony:

All right, we're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is with Melinda J Kelly - embracing the power of questions. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this, and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. And now back to the chat.

Tony:

For our audience, we have the entrepreneurs, the businessman, the solopreneur, how can they use this, the power of questions? Let's give them some tools so that they can use this to improve their business and have more success.

Melinda:

Oh, most definitely. Because one of the greatest gifts you can give to any room at all is to welcome questions. And I've been very fortunate to work with several non-profits and what I've seen start to become an unhappy trend in my eyes is getting so caught up with we've chosen our course; let's go forward. And someone needs to ask you the questions you don't want to hear. You may not like them, but they may raise a question that is going to make or break the success of something. And instead of seeing questions as diminishing your authority, for us to look at questions as a way to make sure we're all successful. I know it's not easy because each and every one of us thinks we have thought of every contingency possible.

Tony:

How did you know that about me?

Melinda:

Because you're joyfully human too. And without fail, somebody will come up with some corkscrew question that you look at them and you think, really? And then you think, Oh yeah, really. And it can be something as simple as where you have the entrance to an event isn't well thought out, and so you could end up with a huge blockage of people so they can't get in, or it could be spending money on an advertising campaign and finding out, Oh, this graphic is wonderful, but we didn't realize in the background there is something that dates it to a season. Well, that means it's not going to be evergreen. You could only use it for a very short period of time.

Tony:

Depending on what you're trying to get out, what you're trying to promote, yes. What kind of question should ... Oh, go ahead, please.

Melinda:

Oh, no. I was going to say when we can make it our adventure, our process, our goal, and within that, each person has their part of it that they are most proud of, it's that sense of there's a collective and an individual success. I know that I and my team have done their absolute best for this, and that we together have created something we can all be proud of.

Tony:

What kind of question should we as the solopreneur entrepreneur business owner, what kind of questions should we see or do we need a coach to ask those questions, and how can we use this to grow our business?

Melinda:

I would say both, not being facetious. I would say, I always feel the wisest thing is to go to someone else and be able to reflect and ask them the things that are bothering you and let them say that's normal or this or whatever. And that's where you go to a coach and be able to get definition on what it is that's unsettling. But for us individually, I would say the questions we need to ask ourselves, am I doing this because I love it? Am I doing it because I know it? Am I doing this as the best use of my time? Am I doing this because I have a control issue? Do I trust the people around me? Am I able to delegate? Would it be wiser for me to outsource this or to do it myself? What is my goal for life, my profession, my business? Am I living up to it, or am I creating a world where I'm so busy I'm in constant motion and I've forgotten where I really wanted to be?

Tony:

I like that, and those are very deep questions. You can spend some time really going through those and answering them. And I think one way to look at this, one way to look at the power of questions is we don't always see the other side. We see things from our point of view because that's where we're at. We are where we're at and we're not necessarily out of the box. We need someone to point out and show the other side, to show more. And it's those questions that get us to take a look and realize there's more than just ourselves in this world, for ourselves in this world. And it's a bigger picture and how we can interface with that, as opposed to right now, what we see from one point of view, we're like myopic. We can only see so much and with these questions and with the help of someone else, we get a much bigger, more pan-determined point of view.

Melinda:

So a great issue. We're talking about the fence. I suddenly was hit by the image of children outside the circus fence, and one looking through and seeing this elephant, which is all gray and wrinkly and thinks, Oh, that's not very exciting, but the little boy further down sees the lion and is terrified. They have two different ideas of what behind the fence.

Tony:

Yes, exactly. And they wouldn't know without looking through to the other side, cause they're in their own shell, in their own box, and they need that point of view to go out there and to go see what's going on.

Melinda:

They need that ladder, that step stool. And we wouldn't think twice about getting a tool for any project we're doing. Why wouldn't we see a coach, a counselor or a mentor as the same sort of tool?

Tony:

Exactly. Except seeing a counselor kind of seems to have a bad connotation sometimes like I'm in trouble. I know I need to see a counselor, but it's just really semantics here folks, because it's someone that helps you navigate through to the other side. I talk about this. For example, for decades and decades and decades, people tried to climb the tallest mountain in the world, 29,000 feet, and they failed year after year, decade after decade. I believe history recorded some 400 people plus that died trying to climb that mountain. And it wasn't until I believe May 1953, if I have the names right, Sir Edmund Hillary, Edmund and Norgay. First of all, you can look it up, it's these two gentlemen, they climbed it. They climbed it and they showed the world that it could be done. They had guides. They had mentors. They had somebody help them that knew when to go, where to go and which route to go up that mountain. Otherwise, they would not have accomplished it. And today I hear there's a line, there's a queue for people at the top and it's very congested there, but that's because these two brave people got mentors and made it and they changed the world. They made history.

Melinda:

Oh, most definitely. And the other is it takes that one person to show it can be done to take the limits away. And so often, and I was going to say, thank you very much because counselor does have ... you're very right. That odd word - a consultant, a mentor, a colleague, all of those - and thank you for raising that very good point. All we need is one person to let us know it's possible and it's amazing where we can go.

Tony:

And on that note, you have a very interesting definition, let's call it, between success and happiness and I'd love if you could share that with the audience.

Melinda:

I'd be more than happy to. I received one of those things at my high school graduation that I smiled and thought, this is nice. What am I ever going to do with it? And it was a little porcelain box with a quote on the top of it. And I looked at it and I've kept onto it all these years because it was from a dear family friend. And it's taken me a lifetime to appreciate the wisdom within that quote. Success is getting what you want, but happiness is wanting what you get.

Tony:

Wow. One more time. Say that again. This is deep. I kind of zoned right into this.

Melinda:

It's very subtle. And like I said, in full candor, it took me a long time to fully appreciate this. Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.

Tony:

How very interesting. And how can we apply this to improve our lives, our relationships, our careers, our business?

Melinda:

I feel that so often we see success in this very monolithic money term and that you're not a success unless you have so many zeros after your name. And yet, if you look at a man who has raised a beautiful family, that's a success. If you look at a woman who has gone into her career path and achieved and worked well with people and has great regard, that's a success. If you look around your room and realize that you have more than a handful of good friends who at any moment could be right by your side if you needed them, you're outrageously successful. There are so many forms of success we no longer consider. There's tangible success. If I call you up and say, Hey, how are you doing? That's a tangible, we're having a moment together. But if I send you a card a little bit later, I'm not going to know if you get it or like it. But intangibly, I've sent you a token of esteem. There's collective success when we all together do something wonderful. And if you've ever been in a choir or singing or dancing, there's that moment when it all is just perfect and you know it, and no one can ever take that away from you. There's no money involved with that. It's a moment you've together made magical. There are so many forms of success we don't think about anymore because we've limited it to this one, very small definition. And I would really like for people to start considering success in a lot of other ways than just how many zeros are before or after a dot.

Tony:

I like that. Thank you so much. Very profound, very wise. Melinda, you are sage, or grammatically, you are a sage. You are a wise sage. Excellent.

Melinda:

Well, I will take that as a great compliment and we're not talking about saging the house I'm hoping.

Tony:

I don't know what that means. Now I have got to look that up again. Melinda...

Melinda:

Yes?

Tony:

Go ahead. No, go ahead.

Melinda:

I was going to say it's to take sage and I believe in the native American tradition to take your home and to remove all that is negative or unhappy and to bring in all that is joyful and clean and new.

Tony:

Ooh, I like that. Let's sage our lives.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead the chat continues with Melinda J Kelly, embracing the power of questions, but first it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

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You're listening to the Tony DUrso Show with key influencers. We'd love to hear from you via email. Be sure to send questions and comments to Tony@tonydurso.com. Now back to Tony and his guests.

Tony:

All right. Okay. We're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is with Melinda J Kelly - embracing the power of questions. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this, and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. Melinda says "working in the family business, you don't think twice about other options. It's what you know; it's what you do and it's who your family is. It's important to say that I love my work was good at what I did and enjoyed the working relationship as both wonderful and difficult as it was with my father, my boss," And now back to the chat with Melinda. Melinda, before we go, a couple more questions I'd like to know, we'd like to know, I'd like my audience to know - any personal habits that are contributing to your vision success?

Melinda:

You know, that is a fabulous question. And honestly, I think the habit has been to be - this is going to sound all sort of so whoo whooy - but it's to get out of I can do it myself and to accept receiving and being given to by others, that to see that in accepting, you're also giving and in understanding I can do a lot of stuff, but sometimes it would be better for me to let other people help me or to go for the help myself. And that's been a habit that's very hard to break. I come from a tradition where everybody did everything, and when we started going into computers, my father programmed in eight different languages, because that's what you did if you were going to do computers. And so, this sense that whatever it was, personal or professional, I can do it all and I should do it all has been very hard to get over and to accept that it's not a sign of weakness. It's actually a sign of strength to be able to say, yeah, I could do that, but it won't be as well as if I let you help me, or yes, I could do that, but you do it so much better. I would much rather that I take this time to do other things that I'm good at. Maybe they help you. That has been an incredibly difficult habit to break that I can do it and to let other people in.

Tony:

That's very important, and that's again, very wise that you recognize that. Very good.

Melinda:

Oh, well. It comes after way too many late nights doing something that should have been so easy, but I think we've all had that night where we go, what did I think?

Tony:

And Melinda, any great resources to share with our audience visionaries?

Melinda:

Oh, I'm sorry, because silence is the one thing you don't want on radio.

Tony:

I don't mind silence. Silence is good. It makes us think.

Melinda:

Well, you know, as you say that, I love reading. And of course, as I say that, I can't think of one book to recommend right now cause they're all piled up as I'm in the middle of a project. But whether it's fiction or non-fiction, I love taking my mind to another place in someone else's world. And the other thing that may sound odd - I absolutely love foreign films. In spite of the fact that everybody's annoyed with the subtitles, but I love seeing how another country or culture views the world and what they're going through and where we have similar issues and where they're in a completely different way of life. Because I can't appreciate what someone else is going through if I don't know what they're going through. And it also helps me understand the fortunate position I may be in or conversely, the limited views I may be keeping.

Tony:

I like that. Thank you for sharing that.

Melinda:

Oh, you're more than welcome. And I'm very thankful I have a theater near me that happens to do a lot of those. But if you can't find one, go to YouTube. There are a million films out there legitimately - not hijacked or whatever it's called - and it's just an interesting way to see the world beyond our own neighborhood.

Tony:

That's always good. It gives us multiple points of view and helps us look through that fence to see the elephant or the lion. Helps us look outside the box.

Melinda:

Exactly.

Tony:

Melinda, last question here. What do you want people to take away from your work? What would you feel your purpose has been accomplished if someone gets these points from your work, if somebody comes away with this particular point of view?

Melinda:

I would say to be kinder to yourself, to realize that we have a lot of things we don't realize we do because they've become accidental habits. But by looking at your life and questioning your life, you might be able to see what you would like to change and what can serve you better. I would like for people to understand that there are many ways to see your life, and the only view that really counts is to view that is making you happy and is serving you. That there are a lot of ways to have a wonderful, productive, fulfilling life, and it's the choice you want. So I guess my ultimate goal is that we could all be more comfortable within our own skins by knowing who we are, understanding who we are and being able to look at ourselves with both admiration and affection, and be able to then share that with others because when we're happy, it's amazing. The world radiates it out with us.

Tony:

It is so true. If we feel grumpy, the world is grumpy. If we're happy, the world is happy. It is so amazing that the world is the reflection of how we feel - everything, always. Once again, this is Melinda J Kelly - embracing the power of questions - and you can find her at melindajkelly.com. Absolutely inspiring, profound interview. Lots of things to think about. I urge everyone to listen to this again. This is deep in terms of helping you with your career, your life, with relationships. This is all very good stuff. Melinda, thank you so much for regaling us or is it regaling with us? No, it's regaling us. Very wise and good sage items, questions to think about.

Melinda:

Well, let me just say thank you for such a lovely conversation, and such a little adventure in thoughts and words and wisdom and all that fun stuff.

Tony:

Thank you. The pleasure is mine. Thank you so much. We will see you again. I love to chat with you again when you have another major update.

Melinda:

Thank you so very much.

Tony:

To my visionary audience, thanks for hanging out with me while I featured an elite entrepreneur who took her vision to reality. I hope it was as inspiring for you as it was for me to do this interview. I learned a lot! Very valuable insights. How did you like this interview with Melinda J Kelly - embracing the power of questions? Yes, you could say she was lucky. She started off in a family business with her dad as the boss. When he passed, she inherited the business, but it's not necessarily the dream of all dreams when you inherit a business. It's not always perfect. Have you been in such a situation as this? After a while, she had to start asking questions such as why was she still doing the business? She was told to write and then she had to figure out why. Was she doing it for her father? Did she need to reinvent the business? And what was the purpose behind it all, and did that purpose sync with her purpose? She had some very defining moments along with her ups and downs that made her regularly reevaluate what she was doing, and should she be doing it, among many other questions. All these questions kept her on the path to success, even though she may have made some changes along the way. I love when Melinda said everything we attempted has this ebb and flow of suddenly you get it, and then suddenly you think you're lost. Have you ever been in something like that? You know, when something just flows for us, I believe it's because we're on purpose and we're doing what we're meant to be doing. The purpose starts first and there is not necessarily any money in it at first. It just feels right. Then, income and success follows as a result. You know, we mistakenly look at success as money only, but abundance is so much more as Melinda says. It's the friend who stops by to see how you're doing. It's being filled with beautiful people and experiences. Do you have a failure to trust that you're in the right place as Melinda talks about? Do you have a self-protection mechanism that kicks in? Yeah, changes can be scary, but if you're following your purpose, then it will all work out, won't it? And what about change? Do you run into a lot of change? Do you know how to embrace it? Melinda says it gets a bum rap. We have change occurring to us every day and our life is filled with it. What do you think? I like how she talks about when asking a friend for advice. Very wise. They may not be the best person to give business advice, and she clearly explains why. A friend may not want to hurt your feelings either. A separate person as a coach, mentor, consultant will be more impartial and speaks from experience, right? I like the tour guide analogy. Nice! There's so much more I got out of this interview. What did you get? And I'd love to know how you use this information to help in your business or career. Tell us. Tell the world. Tweet me at @tonydurso. Now grab hold of your vision. Decide you're either going to start something great or take it to the next level. You have to decide first. You know this. It always starts with a decision and you can get my Vision Map to help you along the process. The free eBook is still on my site. As you know, I created my empire just a few years. That's all it took. I had the Vision Map as my guide, and I wrote that so that you can do it too. And please, follow me on social media. You can find most of those links on the homepage at tonydurso.com. You can also get the Vision Map there and if you have iTunes or access to any Apple device, look up my name - Tony DURSO - and please subscribe to my show. A kind review there will get you a tremendous appreciation back in return. Thanks, and remember: just take action. Success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds. Sow good seeds, do good deeds and join me on the next episode of the Tony DUrso Show.

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