Multi-level Marketing: a No-holds-barred Discussion | Melissa Henault, PharmD

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

[00:00:15] Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, hello, Melissa. Well, Hey, 

[00:00:17] Melissa Henault, PharmD: how's it going, 

[00:00:17] Mike Koelzer, Host: Mike? It's going well. Thanks for joining us on the show today. 

[00:00:21] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Yeah, it's my pleasure. I'm excited to be here, 

[00:00:24] Mike Koelzer, Host: Melissa, for those that haven't come across you online. Mm-hmm tell our listeners what's hot. Why are we talking today? 

[00:00:30] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Oh, what's hot. Oh my gosh. Probably side hustles are pretty hot gigs.

Yeah. Are hot. Yeah. 

[00:00:37] Mike Koelzer, Host: Gigs years ago. I was abandoned. We called those gigs. Yep. What's a gig though, in the non-musical band language, what does that mean? 

[00:00:48] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Yeah, I think, I think we're just living in a world of gig economy. You know, I talk to so many different people, um, all walks of life who have something outside their nine to five.

Right. So, um, you know, I've got people, I've got friends who are in the consulting services and they consult on the side, whether it's in financial services or whether it's in real estate, um, friends in pharmacy that are running their gigs on the side with medical writing, um, you know, all the way down to our millennials who have all kinds of gigs or even your Uber drivers who have that as a gig on the side.

Um, I think that with, um, the current state of affairs, especially with when this is airing with the whole COVID, um, the idea of a gig, a secondary income stream, um, not really having all your eggs in one basket has become more and more. Um, mainstream, you know, the whole gig economy, 

[00:01:45] Mike Koelzer, Host: That's huge. Not having.

Eggs in one basket. And if people didn't realize it before, they sure will realize it now. Oh yeah. Do I have to say gig to be cool? Do you have to say 

[00:01:56] Melissa Henault, PharmD: gig to be cool? Cause I'm an old fart. What, what would you like to call it? I don't know, 

[00:02:01] Mike Koelzer, Host: gig, I guess what was before. Side hustle. You'd call it a second income or a, 

[00:02:07] Melissa Henault, PharmD: or a second job, or, you know, 

[00:02:09] Mike Koelzer, Host: second, but, but a second job doesn't sound fun.

Cause then it sounds like you're going to work the night shift at the seven 11, which is fine, but that sounds like a second 

[00:02:16] Melissa Henault, PharmD: job. You're right. I think that's the delineation, right? Is the side gig versus a side job. I think people think of a gig as something they own, you know, they're doing, and I, and I think that a lot of folks like where I come from and the professional world, I come from corporate America, but people I think can sometimes wear one mask at work and they're real corporatized and they have kind of this bubble that they live in and they're told what they can and can't do.

And there isn't the autonomy and the creative piece that's able to come out. And so you find that some people gig on the side, not even for the money, it's more for a passion. You know, like I, I've got a neighbor who loves to construct boats. Like those small boats that take, you know, Six months to put together.

Right, right, right. Um, and, and he is an attorney who makes great money, but this is a passion of his, and that's his gig. Right. His side thing that he owns that he does. Now, 

[00:03:09] Mike Koelzer, Host: when we say gig though, like in his case, would that be something that is typically associated with money? Does he sell something with that?

Yeah. Because if not, then you have to just call it a hobby. Right. 

[00:03:20] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Right. For sure. No, this guy's highly sought after for his boat building. 

[00:03:24] Mike Koelzer, Host: Sometimes you don't wanna necessarily label yourself as an entrepreneur because somebody says, well, what do you do, Mr. Entrepreneur? Well, I do this. And then maybe it doesn't quite hit.

Everybody's expectation of that, even though everybody is, it might not hit the expectation. And so a gig is just sort of a, kind of a nice side. It kind of encapsulates it pretty 

[00:03:47] Melissa Henault, PharmD: well for sure. It encapsulates EV everything outside. I, when I think of a gig, I think of it as anything outside the nine to five.

Right. Mm-hmm . yeah. What 

[00:03:58] Mike Koelzer, Host: caused the growth of gigs side hustle? Is it simple enough for me just to say computers and, and social media was a huge part of that or, or does it go back before that? I mean, it seems to me it's just like small groups across, you know, the country finding like mindedness and so on.

And we know some of the negatives of that reaching into some of these underground groups that are rising up and so on. Well, for good and bad, depending on what country and who's the leader and things like that, but probably the internet is responsible for a lot of this. Anything else I'm missing?

[00:04:33] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Well, yeah, I think that the internet has become the vehicle to make it possible. Mm-hmm I think that the one piece I would add. is that I think we've come into a decade where people are revolting to just show up to a nine to five for the sake of being there, for clocking in. And what we're learning is that with technology, um, you can be productive from home.

I mean, oh my gosh, are we not learning that now for a lot of your listeners probably who are having to work from home for the first time ever. And thank goodness to technology, they're able to counsel patients and talk to their teammates, their business partners. Right. Um, but I think that what, uh, a recent poll, when they looked at millennials, um, you know, the average millennial would take, I think it was like a 30% pay cut.

To work for themselves and to actually work in a cubicle, uh, go to report to an office somewhere. So I think also what you're seeing is the backlash of reporting in, and having to show face to just say, you're working to be somewhere to create an income. And back to your point with the advent of technology, as it is the ability to create an income stream from home and work for yourself and not have a boss tell you what to do, where to go when to be there, whether you have to work these certain days in 

[00:05:55] Mike Koelzer, Host: the nine to five, in your opinion, what are people revolting against?

What is the deeper feeling? 

[00:06:02] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Well, I think in general, um, we're missing out on life. I think that a lot of, I know in my own profession and in my career, you know, I was a medical director in the pharmaceutical industry. I loved my job. I had a great job, uh, highly sought after job. The problem was. I was never home.

I was on an airplane, um, or in an office somewhere and sacrificed a tremendous amount of time. And a lot of it didn't necessarily need to happen, um, you know, week long meetings and places and, um, you know, all the travel and that sacrifice for, for what to, to, to not be able to be home, um, and be a more present parent.

Um, and just, and for me, for those who travel a lot, I didn't even know my community, cuz I was never home double's 

[00:06:50] Mike Koelzer, Host: advocate. When you said nine to five mm-hmm that almost seems okay. But the nine to five throws in all the other stuff, what if it was truly nine to five? Would that make a difference in. You're talking about being married to your job and gone and your community and so on.

Now I know that most nine to five ERs as they get up and pay, don't have the luxury of being just nine to five. But if it was just nine to five mm-hmm , let's take away the overtime and the travel and all that kind of stuff. Sure. Mm-hmm because I understand that because people get work to death at the corporate level and so on.

Right, right. What about a true nine to fiver though? If, if I said, Melissa, no, you cut all the travel out and this and that. You're truly gonna do a nine to five. You know, you leave home at eight 30, you get home at five 30 every day. There's not many of those out there, of course at certain levels. But if there was, is there still revolt 

[00:07:55] Melissa Henault, PharmD: there?

Oh, I think for sure. Um, I work with, especially the younger, the younger folks. I think that there's, uh, a tremendous amount of question of why do I have to drive in and be somewhere from nine to five o'clock if I can get my job done and my deliverables between nine and noon mm-hmm right. Or nine and two.

Yeah. Um, it's that old adage of having your face be seen in an office and, you know, I, I, I'm in an industry where, you know, I can crank out two or three hours worth of work. That's highly impactful, um, incredibly lucrative. Um, and I'm done for the day. I've made a huge impact and now I get to go do other things, you know, besides just showing up for the sake of showing up, you know, just being punching in for the sake of punching in.

[00:08:46] Mike Koelzer, Host: Okay. , but let's say that someone is paid handsomely for that. Is there a deeper feeling than if something is missing in life or their autonomy or lacking creativity? What do you think is the problem? Let's say someone could go from nine to noon and get all their job done. And let's say nobody would know the difference, but they're able to take, uh, a snooze from 12 till five, or they're able to play video games or play on the computer.

right. What are they missing though? I'm just trying to narrow it down. What are people really missing with the nine to five? So let's take away travel Uhhuh. Let's take away the financials and let's say they get all their job done nine to 12, but nobody notices them from 12 to five. Right? Are they still revolting against something against boredom creativity?

What are they? What are they revolting still against? 

[00:09:42] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Gosh. I mean, that's, that's a million dollar question for any, you know, for every person who has the itch. And I think that one thing that I would underscore is that not everyone has a desire to have a gig or to have their own autonomy. Yeah. So you would have to, you'd really have to ask that individual.

Um, I think personally from my own personal experience and the team that I. Most people, uh, realize that when they're able to scale back, uh, their nine to five work and, and shrink the hours they work and they free up the other personal time. I see it turns into things like being able to show up to your kids play in the afternoon, right.

Or to be able to volunteer, to read, or to be able to actually get your, give back to the community in a greater way that you wouldn't have. If you were, you know, plugged into a nine to five, when you could actually produce and give out what you needed to from nine to 12, right. They picture 

[00:10:40] Mike Koelzer, Host: maybe doing something that gives them maybe more freedom or something like that.

[00:10:46] Melissa Henault, PharmD: For sure. At the end of the day, I think some of us have it in our DNA to be, to be free and to, to own our own time. You know, I'm one that I still work, um, interesting hours that aren't nine to five. Right. And I'm super passionate about what I do, but it's around, I went for a three and a half mile jog with my kids this morning because I can, right, right.

Um, and then got them kind of situated and then did a couple of conference calls. And then I hopped on my Peloton and then I did, um, some, you know, some coaching. So, um, it's the, it's life by your design? It's the business by your design? That I think some people, um, just love. So for instance, Having to be stuck on conference calls.

Yeah. Uh, when I'm on vacation, you know, like that's the piece of being attached to a nine to five, right. That you can't ultimately detach, what's the word detach. Isn't a word unattached. Yeah. Detach, detach. Yeah. You can't detach yourself from, you know, and so I do, I do think there's a certain breed of people who just want that freedom and want that autonomy.

One of my best friends as a retail pharmacist, she actually loves predictability and routine and punching in and punching out and being home and being done, you know? And like she thinks what I do is insane, you know? So it's just, it's a, I think it's a difference in, in personality. Some people couldn't imagine having to be organized with that freedom at your house to actually run multiple businesses, you know?

Right. Some people like the structure. So I think it's just a difference in, um, In the, just what motivates you, um, what you want outta life, you know, for, for me, I'm a, I found out I'm a creative and I'm a serial entrepreneur, and I wasn't able to do that giving all of my time to a corporation. I hear you there 

[00:12:41] Mike Koelzer, Host: for me.

My problem at my independent pharmacy was always, I hated to have a thought that I couldn't move on pretty quickly. And when I say move on, I mean, at minimum, write it down at, at maximum, maybe spend 20 minutes on the computer, looking up something and having to buy something on Amazon. Cause I want that to come in.

So in two days I can do this. I just hated that feeling of being there at this pharmacy, you know, nine to whatever one or nine to five recently, I've had some time off a couple years and now I've gone back to the store more, but it's, I've got it set up more now where it works around. That goal of mind is to be able to be detached every couple minutes, if I need to at least do something for a couple minutes and come back.

So it's not a lack of effort or wanting to work. I think for people, it was a lack of freedom. It comes down to, and not freedom to be like lying on the beach in Hawaii. Just freedom to not have someone say, you've gotta think about this for even a half hour right now. It's like, I don't wanna think about that for a half hour.

I wanna think about this for a half hour and this might be more difficult, but it just allows you to go with your ebbs and flows during the 

[00:14:00] Melissa Henault, PharmD: day. For sure, for sure. Well, and I think that that freedom, and this is what I have found when you free people from significant time constraints. Um, and you allow space in their life.

It's amazing. The output that can come out, the creativity that can come out, the philanthropic, philanthropic, um, output that can come out. It's amazing there. Good. And creation that can happen when you pull people out of the, what I call like the blinders of like the nine to five grind of I'm putting one foot in front of the other, because that's what I do every day, day in and day out without question.

And this is what I'm gonna do for the next 40 years. And like I said, like my best friend in retail, she loves the predictability and she's totally, that's what she wants. But for someone like you, or I. That creates that space to create and that space, um, I mean, I'm a, I'm a hard worker. Right? Right. Like, I'm driving three businesses right now.

Some would say sometimes my husband's like, you're working more than you were when you were in corporate America. Yeah. And I'm like, but I'd work 80 hours a week for myself before I'd work 40 hours a week for corporate America ever again, someone who hasn't 

[00:15:12] Mike Koelzer, Host: been there before might think that when you say you'd work 80 hours for yourself and for someone else that that's saying, I refuse to let him get my profit from my job.

And yes, he's taking a, he, or she's taking a risk, but I'm gonna do that. And I'm gonna get all the reward and all that. It's like, no, kind of like, besides that, it's like, I'd rather have 80 hours divided by three 20 minute time segments, you know, whatever that is 240 time segments throughout the week of 20 minutes to work hard, bouncing to what the flow of my.

System is rather than doing half of that for somebody else that would kill me where this other amen part is, is invigorating. 

[00:15:55] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Amen. And so that you hit the nail on the head. And I think that that's the thing it is like when I'm in my groove, it gives me so much energy and I love what I do that it's not work.

Yes. Those 40 hours, even though I enjoyed my job, I still was reporting to someone else who demanded certain everythings that I did in my deliverables. And there was no creativity and this. What I'm doing now, it's all mine. And I'm in a startup and things are exploding. And like, if I have a sleepless night, it's because I'm so excited, right.

That I like. I'll be up at 3:00 AM, just brainstorming and journaling ideas. And I love being in that space. It's much better than being in a sleepless space where I was like the agonizing thought of not seeing my children for four days, because I was gonna be on the road. Like there's, it's a, it's a totally different sleeplessness, right?

Yeah. yeah. 

[00:16:54] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. It's different. So Melissa has three businesses. Yeah. 

[00:16:59] Melissa Henault, PharmD: What are they? Well, I, the, I have two that are in business coaching, um, and one in network marketing. So I've retired from corporate America. Oh, I don't know about two and a half, almost three years ago. Um, and I know, I know that you've got some skeptics that listen and probably are like, oh, it's one of those things.

She came from a pyramid scheme. I was one of those people. I judged network marketing. Um, I wouldn't have even considered it for a number of reasons. Um, and I hope we have some time to really get into that. But at the end of the day, in retrospect, now it is my beloved industry that I highly, highly recommend to anyone who's considering entrepreneurship.

It's a great place to start. Um, it 's, you know, kind of where I dipped my toe in with absolute low risk, um, and learned along the way about entrepreneurship. Um, and from there have spun off, um, two other incredible businesses, a little 

[00:18:00] Mike Koelzer, Host: background for the listeners, Melissa, you and I have kind of bounced a little bit back and forth through LinkedIn.

Uh, commenting on other people's content and so on. And you said, Hey, Mike, nice to meet you. Let's connect. And so on. And my idea of connection is would this be an interesting show? And I wasn't sure I'd hear a reply back but I sent it back to you. I said, Melissa, I live five miles away from probably the biggest multi level marketing business mm-hmm ever, maybe.

And I live in the grand, rapid as Michigan and ADA, Michigan is around the corner, you know, 10, 10 miles away from the headquarters of this huge multi level marketing business. And I said, I hate multi level marketing. I hate it because of it. And I hate it for social reasons. And I said, but come on the show and let's talk and just have fun with it.

And surprisingly, I got a message back from you that said, yeah, let's do that. Yeah. So here we are. So when was your first actual move to get out of corporate? America. 

[00:19:08] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Yeah. Um, that's a great question. So first I'll, I'll kind of take a step back and say that even in childhood, I was amongst entrepreneurs. I watched, um, very strong men in my family grow and build out businesses that were a vision of theirs.

Mm-hmm that they were complete startups. International. So that was all inspiring from childhood up. Right. And then somehow I ended up in corporate America and big pharma. And then this is 

[00:19:35] Mike Koelzer, Host: family member and friends and that kind of 

[00:19:37] Melissa Henault, PharmD: stuff. Yes. My grandfather, my grandfather had an inter started a business in Chicago and cameras lenses actually.

Oh. Um, if you think of Walmart or the Kmarts of the day where you could go and get family portraits, he actually created the lens for that, so that he, his goal was to make sure his vision was that even, um, middle America, middle class America could afford a good portrait. Interesting. And so he created a lens that a teenager could snap and get a good portrait.

Um, and it went like wildfire and, uh, anyway, so that was his business. But anyway, I HADS, I had entrepreneurs, you know, growing up, seeing that anything could be possible. Yeah. Um, but I ended up getting my doctorate in pharmacy and went into corporate America and worked for big, big pharma. How long have you been outta school?

I've been outta school for about 14 years now. Okay. Yeah. 

[00:20:30] Mike Koelzer, Host: Where'd you graduate when you were nine 

[00:20:32] Melissa Henault, PharmD: yeah, something like that. It's the nutrition, right? so, but, so really, I mean, where the story started for me, cuz you asked, you know, when did I kind of consider taking that step away from corporate? Yeah. Um, and I think that a lot of listeners can probably agree with this or have lived in this, but I was in a place where I climbed the corporate ladder super fast.

Um, no, no doubt. I was at the top of Mount Everest and looked around as a director and my colleagues were twice my age. Right. Like I was definitely a go getter who sacrificed a lot to get to where I got quickly. What 

[00:21:08] Mike Koelzer, Host: was lacking in the people that you passed, 

[00:21:11] Melissa Henault, PharmD: what was lacking in the people that I passed, um, gosh, that's a great question.

I don't, I just have come on, come on. You know, I, I just have always been one of those people who did things at a hundred, 10%. You asked me to do something. I do it at 110. That's just always been my personality. Um, 

[00:21:34] Mike Koelzer, Host: so they didn't stand out as much to the people that were going to move them up the 

[00:21:38] Melissa Henault, PharmD: ladder.

Yeah. I mean, I guess at the end of the day, I continued to provide significant value for the corporation. You. Right. And so they put me through leadership training and I, I went through frontline leadership, second line leadership training, and just tearing up to, you know, they were, they were really, um, getting me ready for a VP role.

You were in retail for a while? I did, I did PRM work and retail on weekends, around my corporate job before I had kids. So you've 

[00:22:06] Mike Koelzer, Host: been out for 14 years. So you were there within a couple years of 

[00:22:09] Melissa Henault, PharmD: graduate. I went straight into pharma from grad school, like literally got my degree and then went to, went to big pharma.

What was your goal going 

[00:22:19] Mike Koelzer, Host: to big pharma? Where did you see yourself in 10 years? Going into that? I 

[00:22:23] Melissa Henault, PharmD: thought I was gonna go into R and D. Um, I really, I did a lot of, yeah, I did a lot of rotations on the R and D side, really fascinated by it. Um, and it's funny how I settled in the medical affairs department, cuz it kind of straddles R and D.

The commercial side, right? Yeah. I found out that I liked humans more than I liked rats and datas . So I ended up in medical affairs instead, which was great. It kind of straddled medical strategy, but was on the forefront of getting into those conversations with thought leaders, um, with, in, in certain disease states, you know, that was, um, it was a really, really cool role.

Yeah. Um, so I always knew I wanted to be in pharma, even going through pharmacy school. Uh, I went through their master's program in clinical research while doing the doctorate, which really kind of helped propel me into the big pharma world. Gotcha. Um, kind of going through that career track, I really envisioned one day being, um, a president of like a big corporation, 

[00:23:23] Mike Koelzer, Host: even when you were starting in R and D you did, did you picture that would be a way up the 

[00:23:29] Melissa Henault, PharmD: ladder for sure.

There's presidents in R and D. And it was really, I had some really incredible mentors when I was in, I got to rotate through pharma as a grad student, and really sit in where pharmacists had roles all throughout pharma, from pharmacovigilance to competi, like all kinds of cool stuff. And it gave me a global perspective that with this degree, I could really climb the ranks wherever I wanted to go in this type of industry.

If you have the business mindset and you 

[00:23:56] Mike Koelzer, Host: wanted to be president. Yeah. Right. 

[00:23:59] Melissa Henault, PharmD: so now I am president of my own company. Right. So, but 

[00:24:02] Mike Koelzer, Host: if you want to be president of the company, right. I'd imagine you also wanted to be president of the us. No, no, come on really seriously. No, seriously. You never thought I'm gonna be the president of the us.

No, 

[00:24:18] Melissa Henault, PharmD: no. 

[00:24:19] Mike Koelzer, Host: You wanted to be president of this pharma company and then would you have just stayed 

[00:24:24] Melissa Henault, PharmD: there? Well, see, it's a great question. I wasn't a parent yet. I hadn't gotten into the throes of, of children and all I'd ever known, um, since, since really childhood was just, you know, going to the achieving, getting to the next thing 

[00:24:39] Mike Koelzer, Host: would you have just said, I'm gonna be president of this pharma company and then that's gonna be.

Good being 

[00:24:45] Melissa Henault, PharmD: that in that C-suite role in like senior leadership was as far as my, you know, 30 year old brain could see at that point. And that would've been a great goal. Like that was a lifelong career track for me and in corporate America, um, you know, like GlaxoSmithKline to have these great leadership programs that really just kind of groom you through the different tiers to get you to the leadership role.

And that's kind of the route I was going. Okay. So back to how I got into entrepreneurship to begin with, what happened to me was I got to a place where I'd had two children in diapers. I'd climbed this, this Mount Everest and, um, got to the top and looked around and realized that I was exhausted.

I was trading a significant amount of time for money. I was. For all intents and purposes, other people were raising my children and, um, my health was taking a toll. And I think that that is a huge problem in the US as we work way too many hours and don't make a priority to take care of ourselves. And it's this vicious cycle of not making priority for health and wellness.

Um, and, and so I, um, coincidentally did a lot of research on cuz I've always been really big in nutrition and fitness and you know, done triathlons, Olympic distance marathons, you name it well, Melissa, before 

[00:26:10] Mike Koelzer, Host: you go into this other avenue, how far did you climb on your 

[00:26:15] Melissa Henault, PharmD: first school? I covered half the country.

Um, I had 12 reports. The only person above me was the VP of our division. Were you at a 

[00:26:23] Mike Koelzer, Host: point on the ladder where the presidency of the company. was no longer in reach. 

[00:26:32] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Oh, like I couldn't be president actually quite the opposite. I was actually being, um, approached about taking a VP role, 

[00:26:41] Mike Koelzer, Host: the VP role.

Would've had you real close to the presidency role potentially of that, or another company for 

[00:26:48] Melissa Henault, PharmD: full disclosure. It actually left one company who offered me the national VP role and I did not want it. Okay. Gotcha. So I, I'm not one, I'm definitely not down in trodden and like didn't reach my goals because they weren't attainable.

I actually got really crystal clear on my priorities in life. And what was most important? 

[00:27:08] Mike Koelzer, Host: You could have been inside feeling terrible at the presidency in another like three years, somewhere. 

[00:27:14] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Exactly. Well, and I think that we all grow as we go through our professions. And this is why I think like coaches, mentors are so important.

Luckily for me at Glaxo, I had some of the most amazing mentors that I still keep close to my heart and to my phone. And I'll never forget being on maternity leave, um, with my second child and being approached about a leadership role that the company wanted me to interview for. And I consulted my mentor and he gave me some of the best advice that I, I stuck to throughout my corporate career.

And that was look, cuz my fear was, if I pass this up, they won't come back to me. If I pass this up, they'll think I don't want it. They'll think I'm, you know, slacking whatever. But I knew that I didn't wanna come back to work with two kids in diapers and cover, you know, half the country at that time as a director on, on airplanes.

But I was still a go-getter who wanted to drive my career. Um, And my mentor said, Melissa, as long as you continue to show up and continue to perform the way you're performing, you call the shots you need to decide what's most important for your family and what is gonna keep your nucleus at home happy, um, and continue to perform.

And these opportunities will continue to come your way and you just have to continue to reassess where you are and if it's the right timing, was that a mentor at the company or, or on your own somewhere? He was a mentor at the company. Yeah. 

[00:28:40] Mike Koelzer, Host: Were there a lot of people at your level or above that? You said, how the hell are they in that spot?

[00:28:45] Melissa Henault, PharmD: You know, it's funny, there were some, but I have to look back at GlaxoSmithKline who raised me and some of the most amazing humans that I know to this day came out of there. Some of the dearest friends, there are certainly some people, you kind of question how they got, where they got. Um, but in general, just, um, amazing group of people.

That's 

[00:29:06] Mike Koelzer, Host: a good answer, because you've already said the name of the company. If I were to ask you the name of a different company, you'd say, yeah, Glaxo is a lot different, but 99% of the others, there's a bunch of it's, it's, it's a head scratcher. Right? Right. You did a good job on 

[00:29:20] Melissa Henault, PharmD: that. Some of my closest friends to this day that are business partners now, and my new business are like from their, the dearest of a teammates, colleagues, employees, um, there, how long 

[00:29:34] Mike Koelzer, Host: between, and please go there, which you were going to about your love of the nutrition and so on how long before those thoughts, and then the time that you left was that a, a, a year span or a three year span or a month span or whatever.

I'll 

[00:29:51] Melissa Henault, PharmD: tell you when the thought started to percolate in my mind. Was when I was still at Glaxo and my division of 72, 12 directors, 72 educators and yeah, 12. Yeah. We were told over Christmas that our division would be consolidating. Hmm. And at that time again, I had two kids in diapers. Right. And I covered just North Carolina and Virginia.

And for those of your listeners who are, you know, in kind of a territory based role, you would know that I had some local employees that I could work with during the day and be home at night. Yeah. And my travel was fairly local. Right. Sure. Right. So that was over Christmas. And, uh, on lo two or three weeks before Christmas, they announced to us, they were consolidating our division from 72 to 25.

And instead of 12 directors, there would be two. And that we would find out in a couple weeks through a phone call, whether we still had a job or not. And that was terrifying because here I had spent, you know, grueling time and hours going through all their leadership development, giving them all my blood, sweat, and tears and overtime.

Right, right. Um, and it was the first time, you know, up until that point, you know, I thought it was kind of invincible. You come out of pharmacy school, you get this big salary, you know, I've got this company car, the perks are great, I've got a pension. And all of a sudden, you know, the rug gets ripped out from under you and you realize, and this kind of goes back to our original discussion of the gig thing.

Right. I have, this was my one stream of income. Yeah. I'm the primary breadwinner. Yeah, I still have over a hundred thousand dollars of college loan debt to pay off. Yeah. Um, and my corporation is deciding in the next two weeks whether they value me enough to keep me or not. Right. Um, lucky for me, you know, my, my VP came to me and was like, look, you know, we've put you through all these leadership programs.

You are like our golden child. We're, we're keeping you, but you need to know that you'll be covering New York to Maine and you'll have half the country 

[00:31:52] Mike Koelzer, Host: either way. You're damned. I mean, either lose your job or, or you have a job that's not feasible with your family 

[00:31:58] Melissa Henault, PharmD: or practical. Exactly. Mike. So in a matter of 24 hours, I realized I had financial success.

But no financial freedom. Mm-hmm and I had no time freedom. And in a matter of weeks, I was gonna be told that I was gonna have to be on an airplane four to five days a week. Wow. And I, I had already seen my mother have to take my two year old to the ER for pneumonia because I was in Maryland for a meeting during that time.

And the mom guilt really starts to settle in that I didn't think about it before I had kids like that, that wasn't part of our equation before kids. Right. Right. So that was the point back to your question. I didn't know what the solution was gonna be, but I remember thinking to myself, losing sleepless nights, asking myself, praying to God, what can I do right now?

Because I have gotten myself, I've pigeonholed myself into this high salary. My family depends on it. And I've, I've climbed myself into this. This, this mountain. And now I don't, I don't feel like I have options. I don't feel like I have control unless I wanna leave this and go find a retail role somewhere.

And for me that was like, like a pay cut. And that was like half my salary to come back to retail, um, and find a job. Right. Doing something I wasn't really passionate about. I loved what I was doing. Yeah. It was the time constraint. So that was the moment. That I realized, I feel, I feel helpless right now and out of control and I'll never let this happen again.

I've gotta come up with a game plan. And I remember my boss, who, again, a dear friend of mine to this day, I speak lovingly of my GSK family. Even though I chose to leave, he told me, I decided to leave. I found a different opportunity with another company that was starting up a division, very similar to what we had created at Glaxo over five years.

And I had helped develop it. They hired me to start up something very similar with a competitor AstraZeneca, um, to do something similar. And I was able to get back down to two states, have 12 reports, most of them local. And so I go back to that mentorship guidance, who said, you know, choose what suits you and your family right now, right?

Yeah. The opportunities will continue to come. So I declined. Half the country role that would probably give me more stripes and a feather in my hat to something different. And I'll never forget my VP who had invested so much in me in training for me and kind of grooming me. He looked at me and he said, you know, I have to be honest.

And I, this is behind closed doors. Like I'm so jealous that you have the freedom to just walk away right now. He said, you are young enough with this company that, you know, he's like, I've got so much invested in my pension, all this stuff, all this baggage. 

[00:34:54] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yes. All the, all the golden handcuffed 

[00:34:56] Melissa Henault, PharmD: baggage, he said, I can't leave.

And you get to go recreate yourself. He said, Melissa, you're gonna look back on this. And it will be one of the biggest turning points and trajectory for your career. And you will, you don't know it now. And he was like a fatherly figure. You know, he said, you don't know it now. That was the first step in being bold and recognizing that I am full.

Um, control of my destiny, that there's a million ways to Sunday to make a million dollars. And it's not just with this company. Right, right. So that opened my mind during 

[00:35:27] Mike Koelzer, Host: that time. Is it fair to say that anxiety was the top feeling you were having? 

[00:35:35] Melissa Henault, PharmD: I was super anxious. Sleepless. Yeah. I can distinctly remember laying in the bed, trying to figure out who was going to watch our children while I was gone and thinking about everything I was gonna be missing.

Like I could cry about it right now. Um, and feeling completely out of control and helpless, like desperately, just like I've got to, I've gotta find, I've gotta find something else. This is not gonna work for us at that moment. I'll never forget. And the second one, which may sound like, oh, wow, is me. But EV it's true.

And, at every level, in every income people, you know, have to buy a home, they have certain finances that they have to meet just the day before signing on the construction of a new home, a new custom home 24 hours before this was announced. And I'll never forget my husband. I'll never forget him, like trying to chase me down the next day and be like, the builders need you to look at these windows, check this certain, whatever fixture out for the new home.

And I remember responding to him with, how can you be thinking about this house when I'm trying to figure out what I'm gonna do with this career? You know? Like it was just so just 

[00:36:51] Mike Koelzer, Host: because you had to be questioning whether you could continue with the house 

[00:36:55] Melissa Henault, PharmD: or I was, yeah. I wanted to pull the plug. Your husband didn't pick up on that.

No, without a shadow. He's like, no, we're, you're gonna be fine. We're moving 

[00:37:02] Mike Koelzer, Host: on during those couple days, week and so on. When did you finally get a glimpse of saying I can do this? Was it when the other 

[00:37:08] Melissa Henault, PharmD: company called? It was like, so serendipitous, like literally within 48 hours of the announcements with our company, I got a phone call from a headhunter.

Wow. From AstraZeneca. So I didn't even look for the job. They came and found me. 

[00:37:23] Mike Koelzer, Host: Did they know that you were gonna be downsized? They must 

[00:37:26] Melissa Henault, PharmD: have, they must have to this day. I mean, because it was a very specific solicitation. They needed someone to come in and help build out a new respiratory care educator division, just like GSK was consolidating.

And the reason GSK was consolidating was because he didn't have the funds for it anymore. So they, they cut it out and AstraZeneca wanted to blow 

[00:37:47] Mike Koelzer, Host: it up. So they might not have known exactly your position, but they knew that it was, there was gonna be a, a shrink and an expansion 

[00:37:54] Melissa Henault, PharmD: somewhere in there. Yes. And for all your listeners who are considering a job job, I mean, this is.

Great advice for anyone. I mean, you, you wanna raise and pay, leave one corporation and, and go to another because they, you know, as great as GSK was at raising me, they brought me in and at an entry level of where I was. And over time, you know, I got promotions. It was great. I felt like I was well compensated.

The moment I jumped to another company, I got a $50,000 raise the last 

[00:38:26] Mike Koelzer, Host: year or so it's been coming to me for some reason. I'm not sure how I've been watching it, but basically it said nowadays, to get your highest increase, you've gotta switch a company. Yeah. Because the anchor's already set at the other one and you're gonna always be looking off of that and you gotta go where there's a new anchor and that's the advice.

So you're lining up with what the, you know, your, your reality is what the current advice is. It seems, I 

[00:38:53] Melissa Henault, PharmD: just began to realize the value of my knowledge. You know, outside of the set value for this one corporation that raised me. So how long did you stay there for? I stayed there for about three years, but that was actually the same time when I took that job.

I also, that was the moment a really good friend reached out to me about it. And she was reaching out to me about nutrition and the business model. At that time, I was still Uber, Uber, Uber, skeptical of anything affiliated with what people historically call MLMs. Right. Gotcha. Gotcha. So when she came to me, I actually was a hundred percent interested in nutrition cuz I'd done some research and you know how when you go through something like that life shaking, it's like, okay, it's time to put my oxygen mask on and get myself together.

And like really just, it was just one of those moments. And I've talked to a lot of people who've left one company and gone to another and it's like, This moment is like revitalization and just resetting. Right. And so, yeah, I was like, you know what? Like I just, I, I had like a good like 10 or 12 week window that I was taking from one corporation to the next.

And I was like, you know what, I'm gonna go in on this nutritional rebalancing thing. I, I don't wanna hear anything you have to say about the business, cuz I make plenty of money and I've got way too much knowledge to look into one of those things, but I've done a lot of research on your products and I actually really love the science behind them.

So let me know, let me get started. So that's how I started. And I, I started on these products and about just within days, you talk about just going from a three to a 10. I mean, my overall wellbeing, my energy levels, just everything started to operate on a better level. Um, and through the, over a period of 30 days, um, just massive transformation, physically, energetically.

I lost about six inches of my waist and I wasn't, I wasn't a fat or overweight person. It was just kind of this visceral toxic crap that we accumulate over a lifetime cortisol bill. Exactly. Cortisol belly, right. mm-hmm and, um, coincidentally, my cortisol levels started to drop and I was sleeping better, 

[00:41:08] Mike Koelzer, Host: But Melissa devil's advocate, you just left a job with the stress too.

Right. And 

[00:41:14] Melissa Henault, PharmD: that's part of it. It was perfect timing for me. Yeah, for sure. So I went on the journey with the products, loved them. Um, you know, I knew, and I knew skeptically mm-hmm, extremely skeptically. I mean, keep in mind, I'm like a medical scientist, liaison who talks about people who look at data who are super critical, but I was still skeptical.

There was something that made me curious about the business because I saw these other women within the organization who had, who came from these really highly coveted corporate careers and were now, uh, you know, building, uh, an asset. And I thought they were crazy. I thought they were crazy, but there was this little piece of me that was a little bit jealous.

Here. I loved these products and I was about to get back on an airplane and start another career with another company. And these women who had introduced me, these products were running a business from home making just as much money as I was about to get on airplanes and, you know, and, and getting back into my corporate gig.

So for me, it was kind of a slow process because I begrudgingly liked, was like, mm, no, like I, I'm not doing one of those things. I'm like, I didn't want people to think I was an affiliate. I didn't wanna sell my friends. I didn't wanna sell my family. I want people to run for me. Like, that's all I thought of.

Right. But. You know, when I got the results and people started asking me, what is it you're doing? You're just, you're glowing. Right? Um, yeah, you could say, well, you left one career and went to another. But the reality is the sequential people in my life, including my husband, who hadn't had a career change as I introduced them to the products and I watched my husband drop 25 pounds in a month and a half.

Right. And I see people with chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, I get their nutrition. Right. And I'm seeing massive changes with them. Massive. I started to get really excited, really excited about the impact I was making on other people's health and on their lives. And I didn't realize it at the time, but it was word of mouth.

I was just coincidentally sharing something I loved. Right. Um, and changing people's lives. But over time it took time for me to actually be open. to the fact that this was a legitimate business that could be leveraged to, to grow and scale and build not just in the US, but in 18 countries globally.

Right. Um, and so it didn't happen for me overnight, but what happened for me over a period of two or three months was that I got into the best help of my life. I can tell you five years in, I ran seven miles yesterday. Um, you know, I'm 40 and I've got three kids now. Um, and I'm, you know, walking, talking on billboards of the Nutri.

but I was able to, to grow and scale this business online while I was working full time on the airplane, you know, in, in my hotel, um, I leaned in and learned the business model. I checked my ego at the door. That was a lot of self work, cuz it's funny. I think back to your first message of like, well maybe this could be a fun banter back and forth cause of yeah.

The perceived perception of network marketing. Um, but I actually, and I actually had to do my own self work on that. You, I don't know if you know this Mike, but I was actually, I was making six figures in Isagenix and still working my corporate job for fear of what people like you would think. Right. My network would think of me walking away from this shiny coveted career with the fancy titles.

And I had to hire a life coach to help me work through that mindset of like, no, no, no, no, no. Like you've got your priorities straight. You have built a business that is by your lifestyle design around your family. That's providing significantly for them. Why are you worried about what the rest of the world thinks?

Right. Melissa, your 

[00:45:14] Mike Koelzer, Host: fear was losing the reputable 

[00:45:17] Melissa Henault, PharmD: title. Yeah. Imagine us sitting at a Christmas dinner table and people are like, oh, what do you do? And you're like, oh, I'm a medical science liaison director. And I have PhDs and MDs that report to me. Oh, tell me more about that, right. Yeah. Right. And then you sit down at dinner and people are like, what do you do?

And you're like, oh, I'm a network marketer. And they're like, Ooh, people run from you. Right. So, but now when you offer to bring me on to your podcast today, like that mind shift for me has. Tremendously. Yeah. And I have this ridiculous passion now and mission to professionalize the industry. And it actually is unfortunate that so many professionals perceive it the way they do and are not open to the actual asset and opportunity.

It could afford them if they were open to it. And so that kind of segment weighed me into the businesses I run now and my presence online on LinkedIn and the professionals that I'm recruiting in that are growing and scaling massive businesses through e-commerce online. All 

[00:46:27] Mike Koelzer, Host: right. So Melissa?

Yes, when I was like 14 and I've got 11 brothers 

[00:46:34] Melissa Henault, PharmD: and sisters. Oh, wow. Do you have 11 brothers and sisters? Yeah. 

[00:46:37] Mike Koelzer, Host: Wow. And we were on vacation at empire Michigan, which is on lake Michigan. and my little sisters would come into the house and they'd have a rock sale selling the rocks that they found out on the, 

[00:46:54] Melissa Henault, PharmD: on the beach.

Right. My kids do that today in the cul-de-sac 

[00:46:57] Mike Koelzer, Host: yeah. A rock sale. So. They'd come into the cottage. And I was smart enough there to say, this is, this is a scam that my little sisters are playing on the adults here. Right. Right. You know, they'd price 'em at a couple pennies or a dime maybe. And, but it's when they would get up to like two bucks and they'd say, this is $2.

And you're like, well, what do you get for a penny? Right. You know? Cause I knew there was some tension there that this wasn't an actual sale. They're using their relationship of being a daughter and so on with the family. So take all the multi-level marketing stuff, all the lawsuits from the past and so on in the business structure.

And I have no problem with that because as independent pharmacists, we're. Crappy business structure. If people saw our business structure, they'd say I was talking to one of my, um, guests before and he said he won't even sell his pharmacy to somebody because it's that terrible that he won't put someone in that position of going bankrupt in a year.

Oh, okay. Right. So put all, put all of those conversations behind. Here's the one issue that has bothered me about multi-level marketing in the past and I've, and I saw something on yours that I kind of like though, but here's, what's bothered me in the past is Hey, can I stop by. And all the things you've heard before, Hey, I'm a business owner now.

It's like, well, yeah, I'm a business owner too, but they wanna start you off in the business or less, they just wanna let's 

[00:48:37] Melissa Henault, PharmD: catch up the bait 

[00:48:38] Mike Koelzer, Host: and switch the bait and switch. And it kind of reminded me of the rock sale a little bit, the bait and switch, but at least they came right out and said, I'm selling rocks for $5.

Right, right, right. And I said, well, not, not to me. I'm smart enough. Even as a 12 year old to know those aren't worth $5. Right. But it's that bait and switch. And like at the pharmacy, thankfully I don't have to sell to any family to be successful. I'm happy if family comes there or friends, but I don't have to do it to be successful.

Right. And I've been baited and switched on before for multi-level marketing. But what I like about your stuff is what I've seen on LinkedIn. I, I see right where you have very nice. What would you call it? Me not memes. What's the word for like a little ad. I wanna call it an ad, but you're gonna get all of me cuz I didn't even know what the hell a gig was.

So now you're gonna say, oh Mike, that's not an ad. That's what 

[00:49:36] Melissa Henault, PharmD: are you just talking about? Little flyers? No, 

[00:49:39] Mike Koelzer, Host: Just like, you know, the things that you had that said I'm gonna teach you about social selling. Oh, you know, I thought that's really cool. Yeah. You know that Melissa has social selling and that's, that's a lot different than, Hey Mike, I haven't seen you in 10 years, you know?

Right. 

[00:49:53] Melissa Henault, PharmD: That's slimy. 

[00:49:55] Mike Koelzer, Host: Here's why I know those don't work for me. Right. Because nobody cares to see me that much. you know, but I liked seeing that social selling. That was really cool to see how it's like. Yeah. Well, no, I'm. Look on my Facebook or whatever I have social selling. So obviously I'm not going to do a bait and switch.

I wanna, I want you to learn about this. I'm sure that was an issue for you and I'm sure that's an industry issue and what's the whole story on that or, or what's the end of the story on that? 

[00:50:25] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Oh my gosh. It's such a great question. And I do think that it's been an evolving industry and I think that right now we are in a new decade.

It is a business of the 21st century where technology, I go back to that ability. To network, connect and build a business from home has never been easier. Right. Um, and so first and foremost, I wanna recognize and acknowledge the history of, of some of the MLMs and the trouble they've gotten in and the feeling that some bad network marketers to this day can make you feel like when they're doing it improperly and chasing after you and trying to sell your friends and family.

And that is the number one reason I didn't wanna get started in the first place, because I had this icky negative connotation for an industry I actually knew nothing about, but it was an emotion that was elicited when it was even brought up. Right. Sure. Um, but when I got in the throes of us and realized and learned.

Just the incredibleness of the product line and started to learn the power of if something's results oriented and emotional, there's no better way to spread it than through word of mouth. Right. But I agree with you a hundred percent that the bait and switch to this day drives me crazy, which is why I love LinkedIn.

And I don't build my business on Facebook or Instagram. My friends and family are on Facebook and Instagram. That's where I connect with them. I follow them. They get to see my kids playing in the backyard and the garden that I'm growing. So, you know, at the end of the day, um, network marketing is a business through word of mouth.

And what I have found is that there's, there's two differences. Consumer types. Right. And I think where companies get in trouble, like the one that you've talked about being in your backyard is where companies just a hundred percent lead with a, a business. And it's not like an end game. Like you, the there, the business is the number one thing sold, not the product 

[00:52:42] Mike Koelzer, Host: I live.

Like I say, 10 miles away from this place. I have never used it. One of their products, not on purpose, I've you, you know the story, right? I've never, I've never seen a product with someone else. I'm never right. I've never used it. I've never had anybody tell me about it. Never. 

[00:53:01] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Right. It's because that's the old adage.

It's the old MLM perspec, it's the old MLM model, which is not network marketing. It's a business that has come of age and a time where technology and where people are influenced is online. It's not, it's not belly to belly. It's, it's not, um, with your, it's a totally different platform belly to belly, you know, like, you know, like your neighbor, um, versus using the, you being on the internet.

I 

[00:53:32] Mike Koelzer, Host: just wish you'd keep your belly out of this. I'm quite tender about that subject. 

[00:53:37] Melissa Henault, PharmD: okay. So, so let's, let's talk about this. So, um, What I love about LinkedIn and why it's my sweet spot and why I've been so successful is because I treat my business like the income opportunity that it is on the right platform, where people are looking for an opportunity, right?

I'm not, I'm not chasing my neighbors and my family to get into a business with me when they never expressed an interest in being in the business with me. Right. But if they complain about the quarantine 15, I might suggest they wanna try a 30 day system and we can reboot their body, but I'm, you know, but it's kind of like the old one of my top mentors in my industry used to be a salon owner.

And she said, where network marketers get a bad rap is where you have her salon. As an example, if you had a client come in and sit down to get their haircut, And they're getting their haircut. And you say to them, gosh, you know, you love getting your haircut so much. Have you ever thought about coming into business with me and cutting hair?

And it's like, no, I just wanted a haircut, but thanks. And you walk away feeling dirty, right? That's kind of that bait and switch old kind of mentality of MLMs. Um, what I do and my business is I have an online eCommerce franchise. I teach people how to set up a global business from home. It's a health and wellness one stop online.

Sure. Store. Right. And you know, there is a business model, but the thing is 87% of the consumers with our company with Isogenics are consumers. Just the complete opposite of what you see with your older MLMs, who don't have a foundational, like, um, blockbuster product that really shot. The company, you know, out into the stratosphere, our company was founded on product, not business model.

Our company was founded on intermittent fasting and nutritional cleansing, which by the way, was published in what is the new it's everywhere now. But even in the New England journal of medicine last year, it really, really validated what we've been doing for 18 years. Right? So, you know, our company found it on a product and said, we're gonna get this right.

We're gonna create a ridiculously amazing product line that absolutely drives results. The best place to grow and scale a product, especially in nutrition and wellness. That's results oriented through word of mouth because people trust. The results that they see from the people that they know. Right.

Um, and so it's a phenomenal business model when you're in nutrition and health and really beauty. Um, and so it's actually a brilliant business model that the company went that direction. But where I wanted to go with just talking about the business model itself is that, you know, LinkedIn is a great platform where I go and find business partners who wanna build an online franchise.

I can teach them how to build a turnkey business and lock arms with me. And of course, we also are, you know, the end product of any business are consumers. So I have a number of functional medicine, you know, pharmacists, who've got functional medicine degrees, I've got consulting pharmacists. I have physical therapists, chiropractors who love the products, love the science behind them.

It can get behind it a hundred percent because they know the quality process. They know, it's third party validation. They know they can offer it without a shadow of a doubt to their clients, their customers, and drive incredible results. Right. And I go back to your business model with the pharmacy, right.

And you know how we traditionally think about making money with a bricks and mortar and the amount of investment that goes into owning a bricks and mortar business, right. And nine out of 10 businesses fail. And so. I'm gonna throw, I'm gonna throw, uh, talk about the elephant in the room because I get this from smart savvy business people sometimes they'll say, well, I've looked at the numbers in your company and you know, only a small percentage succeed.

And I'm like, have you looked at the numbers and entrepreneurship in general? Have you looked at the numbers of businesses that fail from the beginning? There's a lot of different variables that are going to determine your success in 

[00:58:12] Mike Koelzer, Host: some MLMs in the past. And maybe even now, if you get some that are not reputable, it can be quite low, but they're usually comparing that to saying if you were to take that money and just put it in well, you know, and they usually say something safe, you know, like education's safe or, or something like that.

But to your. Correct. They're not saying if you were to take that money and instead of doing it this way, you know, you put it into, um, right. You know, you opened up a restaurant slash movie theater in January of 2020. you know, I mean, you're not comparing it to something, a business so much as to if you were to put it somewhere safe, but that's not what a lot of people 

[00:58:57] Melissa Henault, PharmD: really want to do it.

Right. Well, so two things here, here, and I lo and that's why I love bringing this out on the table, because my perspective and my experience, there's two variables to success rate in network marketing, um, which is different than the multi-level, where people who come in first are the ones that make all the money.

That is not how most up to date compensation models work. Our, our company's only 18 years old. It's very different from a company that didn't have a supercomputer. To rely on a fair and balanced, um, comp model, no matter when you come into the business. Right. Um, but there's two reasons. People, from my perspective, on what I've seen in my five years, there's two reasons people don't succeed.

Right? So, the number one is just like, like I said, with the odds of entrepreneurship and success rate nine outta 10 fail, but really it has to do with how people approach the opportunity. See what I have found. Historically people think of this business model as a get rich, quick scheme, they think they can do little effort and find a one hit wonder and make a ton of money.

Right. And that's unfortunate because it's been, it's been socialized that way by bad multi-level marketers. Yeah. But yacht 

[01:00:11] Mike Koelzer, Host: and those kinds of things. Right. 

[01:00:13] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Right. You have, you have to do the work. I'm here to tell you. Can you cuss on this podcast? Maybe not. I worked with Fanny. You wanna drop a F. No well, and ABO yeah, so I, you can say that.

Okay. so I let her rip, I worked my ass off to build an income producing asset that now pays me out every single week, whether I show up or not, right. It was not a get rich quick scheme. I built a network of over 5,000 of mass consumption with a reorder rate of 87% because people love the product because the product drives results.

And the company gives me a 6% profit share because they don't have a middle man. They don't have bricks and mortar. They don't have utilities, they don't have sales clerks, checking people out to purchase the products. Right. They're online. I've been able to give this network of consumption, right. But where I was going with that.

Is that I did the work. And I think that a lot of people come into this thinking it's to get rich quick. So that was the number one. But then the number two is that they actually don't put forth the effort that is needed to drive a six figure, multiple six figure income. You know, I have people who come in and they're like, yeah, I wanna, I wanna walk away from corporate America and do what you did, Melissa.

And I'm like, okay, great. So we start the coaching and, you know, they reach out to their first three people on LinkedIn who may be interested in the business model and they get a no. And they're like, oh, I, I it's, this isn't gonna work for me. It's not, for me. The business model doesn't work, right? Like they get two or three failures.

Um, and they say it doesn't work or they expect a massive amount of money overnight. And that's not the way this business model works. And I'm here to tell you that that's not the way it works, but once you build it. You get paid for a lifetime. It's like a freight train that I think that many who don't get, have you read the Robert Kiyosaki books?

I'm sure you have rich dad, poor dad, that kind of stuff. Yeah. So, you know, those cash flow quadrants, you know, I think about when I was in corporate America and even when you're self-employed and you own that pharmacy, man, you gotta show up to get that money. Right. And you gotta show up in corporate America to get paid.

And when I went on maternity leave, after six weeks, I didn't get a penny. Right. Right. The company didn't matter how many people I trained and how much business the company was profiting because of my coaching or the impact I made. I wasn't there that day. So I didn't get paid. Right. Yeah. Right. That's linear pay.

And what I love and have fallen in love with, with this business model is that leverage. And residual, and it's so different from my corporate job where I did the work I've, I've brought in over 250 people to Isagenix and out of those 250 people, we now have 5,000 in our organization. And that's because out of those 250, it's been introduced to 5,000 more people.

Right. And so what happens in that right side of the quadrant with Robert Kiyosaki, who talks about residual, that legacy money is that you make money while you sleep. And when I was in corporate America, I thought that was like, you have to have a one hit wonder, you have to like write a song or do something I wasn't qualified to do in order to get paid out residually until I was able to check my ego at the door and actually learn the business model.

Once Mike, once I finally understood the power of leverage. once I understood that once I got a network of mass consumption for a product, that by the way, I love that I stand behind, right. That it would pay me out as an asset for the rest of my life. Yeah. Whether I showed up or not, I was that when you, you could have put a brick wall in front of me and I would've gone through it, which I did to make it happen.

[01:04:20] Mike Koelzer, Host: I like how you still associate with multi level marketing, the words mm-hmm I like how you associate. With social, social marketing. I think where some of the companies have gotten in trouble in the past and using the dreaded pyramid scheme notation is that there was no, or very little product involved where almost all of the money was from business, startups, fees, those kinds of things.

So to hear about product flow pulls it very far away from anything else, but just a product. Be multi-level marketing. And then with the underlings of that being either social 

[01:05:06] Melissa Henault, PharmD: or, or whatever. Well, you know, you hit on something I'd love to just kind of circle back to for a quick second. Um, that's really important.

And that is, you know, historically there's and even today there's companies that say, oh, you've gotta, you've gotta invest thousands. You've gotta front load and have a ton of products. You've gotta buy a ton of this stuff and keep it in your house. And that's front loading. The business model and setting people up for failure.

You know, um, our company and many state of the art network marketing companies, we have a policy. You're a customer. First, the only barrier to entry with our business is you eat the food. You try the products, there's no purchasing, you know, a ton of products for future consumers. Like you literally order what you can eat this month and give the products a whirl.

And that actually introduces you to, to joining our company and our culture. If you decide to build a business great, if you don't, there's still an 87% chance. You're gonna keep ordering it, cuz it's a redirected spend to something that you were, you had in your pantry anyway, but now it's driving better health results for you.

And the other thing I wanted to hit on real quickly that you brought up, that's a great hot, hot topic is the pyramid. Right. The pyramid, the dreaded pyramid, where people at the top make all the money. and, um, that, that historically has been true with companies that have gone to court and been in lawsuits about, because the, it, historically companies have created compensation structures that ultimately the people at the top make the most money, cuz the people at the bottom have they have these breakaway models where they can only make so much money and they roll up somewhere.

And there's all these crazy rules where ultimately the volume gets flushed out and only the people at the top do make the money. That's they say the, the, the house it's stacked, the cards are stacked for the, to the house, right. That gets companies in trouble. You know, the more, the more state of the art, newer network marketing companies, acutely aware of that, you know, with our company, we have a binary compensation model, which means it doesn't matter.

When or who, or how you come in, every single person has the same equal opportunity to build the exact same business center, no matter what. And, um, that's, that's because of the advent, I personally think because of the technology and supercomputers that are able to just constantly be able to calculate that kind of stuff.

Um, but the pyramid, so let's go back to my corporate days. Okay. And let's think about that HR structure that was depicted lovingly as a pyramid. And my boss always was in a pay grade higher than me. Whenever he had that title, no matter how hard I worked, he always made more money than me. My direct reports were below me.

They always, there's no way they could make more money than me. It was a ceiling, it was a cat. This was their title. This is what they could make. They had less vacation. My boss had more. That's just the way it was, it was a pyramid. Right. I came from the pyramid. I came into a company when I was 18 years old, so I'm not the first to market.

I'm not one of the first people in, and I flew past thousands of people in the organization to become one of the top income earners, which first of all, debunks that the people that came in in the beginning had to make the money. Right. But secondly, we have unlimited. Income earning and to some that's like mind blowing, but to me it's fair.

It is a, it's a, it's a mathematical equation and it's based on the volume that runs through your business center. It doesn't matter your credentials. If you have a doctorate or you're a hairstylist, right. If you're building out a business of mass consumption, regardless, the computer system recognizes that and gives you a profit share of 6%.

And so what I love about our business model is there is no pyramid. It is a flat ball game. And so I'm just on a mission for the next 20 years of my career as a professional network marketer, to educate people of my love for this industry and debunk the myths of, of the baggage of the old days, right?

The 

[01:09:29] Mike Koelzer, Host: baggage of the old days is hard to escape, but thankfully with the quick access. The internet stories can change quickly for the bad, but also for the good, right. So, Melissa, you've talked about the mm-hmm network marketing. I'm assuming one of the coaching hats you wear is that I might be wrong, and then is the second one related to do these form a group?

Or is, or is it the second one out there 

[01:10:03] Melissa Henault, PharmD: somewhere else? Oh, great question. It's kind of, I've become a serial entrepreneur. Um, and it all started really with my corporate life and the training I got in corporate life of really how to grow and scale a team, how to be organized with training, you know, and onboarding and duplicating.

Cuz I was constantly bringing in new employees and we had to have a streamlined process to onboard and educate certified, put people out in the field to be experts. Right. and then managing nationally a Geodis dispersed team. Right. So, yeah, it's incredible. When you think back the storyline and how it tees you up to be successful in like the next, the next phase.

Right. Um, but so for me, what I found was that I, unlike 99% of network marketers, um, I do not like posting and pushing a product on a platform like Instagram or Facebook, because that's not what that platform is for. And, um, being a business professional, I really enjoy talking about business. I like talking about cash flow quadrants and Robert Kiyosaki.

And, um, I like talking business. I like talking about an opportunity. And so unlike many of, even my leaders in my organization, I, I kind of went a hard right from like, have you ever read the blue ocean? The book, the blue ocean? No. Um, okay. It's a great read, but it talks about like the red ocean is where everybody's doing the same thing in the same market and competing, doing the same thing and trying to be, you know, differentiate themselves and that's network marketing and Instagram and Facebook.

I created a blue ocean for myself, took a hard right to LinkedIn and said, look, I'm leading with a I'm as incredible as this product is. I wanna find my business partners and future business partners, partners on LinkedIn, because these people who are active on this platform are looking for something they're open to.

Right? And so it's the right platform to be communicating and connecting with people about a business opportunity versus chasing your friends and family. And so that exploded my business. In network marketing, I've created a formula. And given my background in corporate and training, I was able to partner, um, with some Kajabi export experts and actually create a training program for my team on how to best network on LinkedIn and to best, um, create your best personal brand on LinkedIn, um, and how to network and recruit for the business opportunity on LinkedIn.

And so that was initially just for my team. I did it just for my team so that we could duplicate it out. Yeah. Um, and bring in, as new people came in, it was a way to train. It was an asset to say, Hey, you know, we've got this turnkey training program. You learn as you go, we'll get you out and you can start building your business.

What I quickly found is that it wasn't just me and it wasn't just my team. There's a lot of really polished professionals. Professionals who also have a network marketing business that aren't in my company. So I joined a mastermind of women entrepreneurs who are top income earners for other network marketing companies that are attorneys that are law, that are, um, doctors that are dentists that also have those side gigs in network marketing that are aligned to a product that they love.

And they were very curious about how I was able to find my business partners on LinkedIn. Cause they'd never heard of taking that approach really. Um, even though they were business professionals by day, they were still spamming network marketers on Facebook and Instagram by night. Right. It seems 

[01:14:04] Mike Koelzer, Host: intuitive for, I guess I've been linked in forever, but a lot of the people you, you look and a lot of the professions aren't even on 

[01:14:13] Melissa Henault, PharmD: their right.

So one of the dermatologists on my Isagenix team. who has a podcast by the way, millennial doc, she, um, I'm coaching her now. She had been recruiting on Instagram and she, we went, we got her on LinkedIn and she was, I was like, she had like five people in her network. I'm like, what are you doing? Yeah, Dr.

Nick Nicoletta, you should be over here, networking with your other professional millennial doctors who are looking for a secondary income stream, a plan B, a way to create leverage. And, and that's a conversation you can have on this platform without turning people off because it's the right platform for so long.

And the short of it is I ended up opening it up to, um, at first other social sellers, uh, with other companies. And that, that grew like wildfire to, um, a real formalized LinkedIn boot camp course that I offer, um, about once every six weeks. My next one is June 22nd. um, where I train anyone in social selling really how to build out their personal brand on LinkedIn to create that no, like, and trust, like, you probably felt like you knew me a little bit before we got on, on here because of my LinkedIn strategies.

Um, so that people know who I am, that you know who I am. I am who I am that snowballed into, um, higher end clients who wanted one on one coaching to really get their business up to snuff their brand representation on LinkedIn. Now I have, um, it's stemmed out to financial advisors, so I've got a whole firm that, um, I had an owner present to me.

He said, you know, my, my financial advisors know their numbers. They're great with their business, but they need to be trained on how to get out there and find them. On the right platform, because that's where I said in the beginning, like the way we do business has changed, it is the business of the 21st century to be in the media.

You are leveraging and branding yourself, whether you're on Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn, the average American spends four and a half hours on the platform. Right. So if you're not creating no likes, and trust factor on, in a feed, Where you're looking for clients it's gonna, the sell cycle to bring people in is gonna take you a tremendously longer amount of time.

So now I'm helping financial advisors on creating their own personal brand and creating their own, you know, no like, and trust factor in how to find ideal clients, how to attract ideal clients. Same with real estate agents, people who are really focused on development and growth. I have found most of you're gonna find them on LinkedIn, right?

They're not scrolling for three hours on Instagram cuz they see that as a waste of time. So that's where my businesses have really springboard into LinkedIn training for social sellers is one. Um, I have a totally, uh, second tier mastermind for people who graduate from my basic LinkedIn bootcamp and its application only.

I only take a certain number of clients per month and teach them even. Uh, further develop their branding techniques, their booking techniques, automation. Um, so that's more of a mastermind group. And then I have individual one on one high end clients that get me to themselves to help them drive their personal brand.

Let's say that 

[01:17:38] Mike Koelzer, Host: nobody was going to show you the money on this. And they said, we're gonna hide that from you, Melissa, but just trust us. It's all gonna work out in the end. How much time would you like to spend in a week on this new coaching outside of your product versus with your base? People now I know the answer is like what?

Yeah, but we need to do this to get the residual, you know, to get the residual income. But I'm not talking about that. Which one do you 

[01:18:13] Melissa Henault, PharmD: like more? Oh, that is a girl you ask the best questions. And it's funny you ask that because I've actually created my coaching so that my LinkedIn bootcamp that I offer every six weeks, which I love by the way, is designed so that my entire team is able to fold in anyone that they bring into my training.

Um, so it's actually, you know, an added benefit to joining my team is that you get this LinkedIn boot camp training for free, um, essentially, well, you, you eat the isogenic food, right? Because that's what gets you into the business. Um, so I'm actually, it's, I'm killing two birds with one stone and it's really kind of cool.

Because in any given class, I may have 30 people from my own team and 75. From other network marketing companies who are professionals who are looking to professionalize Polish, how they present themselves on LinkedIn. And so it's a cross pollination think tank of professionals who really wanna professionalize this industry in one forum and they learn from each other.

Um, they learn best practices from each other. And actually, when I take you back to that, Melissa three years ago, who was so anxious about walking away from corporate America, for fear of what other people would think, this community allows my students to be Bulletproof in 10 feet tall. And they're a decision cuz they're surrounded by other professionals who've chosen this industry.

So it helps create this cohesive momentum regardless of what network marketing company you're from now. Did I hear you 

[01:19:57] Mike Koelzer, Host: correctly though? That you've got your other one goes into not. They're not necessarily multi-level marketers or network marketers, they're attorneys trying to get more attorney clients just right.

For their attorney business. Right, right, right, right. Mm-hmm do you like doing that? Or do you say now they're boring. I 

[01:20:18] Melissa Henault, PharmD: have more fun. I think, um, with the social selling aspect, because it's the sweet spot of like, cuz I like, um, I like coaching this, the real strategy of recruitment for network marketing.

So I would say, but there's one of my favorite spots to be, is I right before you, or actually two hours before you was a, a one on one coaching call with two wall street walkouts. So they left wall street, um, and they're building an Isagenix business. They're not on my team and they're paying me a pretty penny to coach them for an hour each week on how to leverage LinkedIn, to recruit their professional network.

Those people that just they're so coachable, they're so motivated. Um, they're really fun to coach too, you know, but I like coaching the underdog too to help them get started. You know, I, 

[01:21:06] Mike Koelzer, Host: I bet it's fun to do that because also you're not dealing with a lot of the bitterness that goes along with really mature industries.

Mm-hmm , which brings me to another question for you. A good portion of the listeners of the podcast are independent pharmacy owners amongst other people, but a good portion are those. And we all do our social media and, and those kinds of things, but it's not the usual course where you're sitting there on Christmas Eve with your family and you might bring up something about how your nutrition's feeling good or about this or this or that.

But most people just don't bring that up. Oh, did I tell you about this pharmacy? I've been going for 20 years that I like, and you maybe should give it a try, right? Besides, this is really dirty to me. What, because here you are saying that you're doing the internet and social media and you're coming right up front about social stuff.

And I'm gonna ask you a question about. Everything that I've been complaining about. This is just dirty thinking back to like all the stuff that we said that you are not, and we know that Isogenix is not. And so on. Right. How does a pharmacy use some of those tricks that we all hated about MLM to bring up a conversation?

You know, maybe there's not a way, maybe it's just all social media, right? But is there ever a way to have a customer remember when they're speaking face to face with a friend to think about mentioning a subject that is as boring as pharmacy? 

[01:22:53] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Yeah, I, it's a valid question and I would go back to. The philosophy of the, the whole word of mouth and, um, kind of that referral base, like would, could you guys, so I think about my hair stylist, for instance, it cost a little bit of money to get my hair done.

And, um, she does a great job, but I never really thought about telling everybody about it. And then one day she handed me a coupon and said, here's 15% off your next haircut. If you can introduce me to another client, right. and so what it did was then I've got like, you know, some mu I I've got kind of money burning a hole in my pocket, thinking who can I, you know, the next time somebody says something about my hair, I'm much more inclined to say, oh, well, I've got this referral.

You should go check out my friend. And I think that goes back to the whole premise of the word of. Marketing, um, when you're willing to give your most enthusiastic customer a kickback at whatever percent they're gonna be more likely to share. Right? Yeah. Um, so if there's some kind of referral program that you guys could have with your pharmacies, it would probably motivate your, your patients and your customers to bring more people 

[01:24:10] Mike Koelzer, Host: in and to give them a tool because they don't know your elevator pitch.

Right. But if you give them a tool or a business card that they throw in their wallet and it's something or something, both a memory key mm-hmm and also. A tool that they can lend or give to somebody might be a way to kill two birds with one business card. 

[01:24:35] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Let's say for sure. I even think about my chiropractor.

When I left the other day, they gave me a referral sheet. Um, you know, for, I don't know what I was gonna get, like a free massage or something if I brought in new clients. Yeah. Cause you know, chiropractors are suffering tremendously right now with people not coming in. Yeah. Um, so it's that whole, um, I, the whole word of mouth referral piece.

Yeah. Um, there's some, you know, there's some value to that. Um, and then, you know, there is the whole creating no like, and trust, I don't know how you do that with. You take current technology and apply old philosophies. So for instance, what I do with my LinkedIn bootcamp, this is maybe something you guys could do with your pharmacies is that I offer up certain freebies each week based off of people who post and tag me and the course on their platform.

So maybe you're not crazy about social media, but if you remember that, you know, The average American spends four and a half hours a day there. If you gave them a little hashtag card or something, um, and encouraged them to do a selfie, hashtag tag, you guys. Um, I do a raffle once a week. Yeah. And I offer people a 30 minute, one on one free coaching call, um, from one person a week, maybe you guys could offer a free, um, you know, med reconciliation session.

[01:26:02] Mike Koelzer, Host: That's a great idea because a lot of times people devalue their business with something free or whatever, you know, they do it. And then they say something that's just so unrelated. But to say that you're gonna give, you know, something of value that really lifts up what the customer can think of you is cool.

[01:26:27] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Well, and think about what you give, if it can create even more. No, like, and trust in a more committed consumer. Yeah. Right. So what better way to promote my business than to offer free coaching to someone, because I know that I'm gonna give them tremendous value and they're gonna love what they get from my coaching.

I'm getting publicity on their network because they shared, and then they're gonna have a great coaching call and they're gonna wanna come back for more. 

[01:26:54] Mike Koelzer, Host: That sounds like a really good idea. What is now that you've built a lot of this up you've left pharma and so on. What is your biggest fear right now?

And how does that present itself to you? Is it anxiety or depression? Is it, this, is it that, what do you fear over these 20 years that you talked about whether it's business 

[01:27:25] Melissa Henault, PharmD: or personal? Oh my gosh. What a timely question. Total. Total timely question. Um, I just had a call with my business coach about this yesterday.

Um, it's a good problem to have, but it's something you have to work through when the abundance is overflowing in all areas. How do you balance it? Right. So, um, I've had, I have 30% growth in sales, in my own personal business right now. Uh, we have more people coming in in the last month than I've seen come into my organization in the last three months.

So the velocity at which people are coming in is tremendous. And I don't know if part of it's people are more open right now, or people just are putting on those, those, those COVID 15 and they wanna get it off or 

[01:28:15] Mike Koelzer, Host: What you got is a triad of the COVID 15 people actually. Maybe needing some actual money right now, if they got into a, you know, fast enough, right.

And three is the fear of not wanting everything in one basket, as you talked about earlier. So it's at least three reasons. Yeah. 

[01:28:34] Melissa Henault, PharmD: And people have down, a lot of people have downtime to list, to take a look when they didn't before. So I've got that going on. And my LinkedIn coaching is exploding.

So right now there's only 24 hours in a day. So you talk about what keeps me up at night is, oh my gosh. Like one of the reasons I left corporate America was to have more time freedom, um, and to be a, a more present mother and spouse yet still contribute significantly, you know, be able to pay the mortgage.

And now all of a sudden it's like pouring an opportunity on me and it's like, I'm trying to capture it all? Does my family sacrifice because of that? Or do I pull back on one or the other and focus on one at a time, or what I've done is spend a pretty penny on an incredible business coach. Who's helping me push and grow and scale both to million dollar businesses and in the process delegate and give certain, um, responsibilities to other people.

So what I'm learning now is to hire out and that's been the hardest thing for me, you know, cuz when I first started in network marketing, it was well, I might, you know, we talk about that cashflow quadrant and wanting to remove yourself from being the most important variable. And that's one of the things.

I loved that first level of growth that I had with network marketing. I had this nice asset going, but now we're going through another momentous change. That's requiring more coaching. And so what keeps me up at night right now and full transparency is like, oh my gosh, I asked for all of this now, can I handle it right?

yeah. Right. Can I handle it? You know? But is that just kind 

[01:30:32] Mike Koelzer, Host: of a giggle thing? That's not a real worry though. 

[01:30:34] Melissa Henault, PharmD: No, it's an absolute worry because you have to remember when we first talked, why did I leave corporate America? 

[01:30:40] Mike Koelzer, Host: It was getting too big and you're losing your kids and all that kind 

[01:30:43] Melissa Henault, PharmD: of staff. And I walked away from an incredible opportunity, right.

Because I had my boundaries. Yeah. Now I'm having to redefine my boundaries. I mean, I'm giggling, but I was crying yesterday. Mm. I know I'm capable, but I have to, I have to hire out the right. Coaches who've gone before me and trust the process and delegate if I want to grow and scale two businesses at the same time, the way I envision I'm just going from being an individual entrepreneur to going back into kind of having employees, right?

[01:31:17] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. I feel sort of bad about saying the giggling part. Cause I forgot about the family. , you know, there's that story. It's the guy that, you know, went down to Florida, found a guy that was fishing in the day and playing his guitar at night. But both of them did so well. He said, listen, why don't you come up?

North. And we'll start this into a company and we'll make a record and we'll do this and you can franchise this and all that. And then 20 years from now, when you're really successful, you can move down to Florida and fish all day and play your guitar at night, right? yes. Do. That's what you're dealing with 

[01:31:53] Melissa Henault, PharmD: now.

That is my exact struggle. And my husband and I have had the conversation. He's like, well, when is it, you know, where is enough enough? Where do you draw the line? Right? Like, there is an incredible opportunity, but we're doing just fine. Right. But it goes back to what we said in the very beginning, that I could work 80 hours a week with something that I love.

And I'm in. A space that I love. Right. Um, and so it's really hard to turn it off. When you like you're in your house, you're running a business from home and you have so many eager professionals with an ear open. And, you know, you know that you know that you know, that you can change their life yeah. And build an asset for them.

And I'm seeing it unfold right now. And I'm seeing people be able to walk away from their nine to five or scale back their nine to five. And, um, it's hard to turn that off, you know, if, if it was just for a corporation and it wasn't like my baby, I could much more easily turn it off. So it is, it's a, I think it's a real struggle with entrepreneurs is like, where do you draw the line in the past?

[01:32:57] Mike Koelzer, Host: You could have spent a hundred percent of the time with people that are really happy, they're new customers and so on, or, you know, whatever. But now, as you get bigger, you've gotta spend like 30% of your week talking to the crabby marketing person and your, and your crabby advertising person and your crabby accountant and your crabby, all these, all these people that are not compared to the new life that you give people, the excitement I'm gonna call 'em crabby.

My point is you're spending a lot more time with your fellow crabby people and not with the beautiful excitement of new customers. That's kind of hard to deal with sometimes. 

[01:33:40] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Yeah. I mean, it's a great point, but I think that hiring them out gives you actually more space and time for the new people.

You'd spend 

[01:33:49] Mike Koelzer, Host: some time if you wanted to be with the newer people. And then the rest would be like a flow more and they'd be taking care of the flow. 

[01:33:57] Melissa Henault, PharmD: That's right. There, the more process piece, like my personal assistant now, she's actually in my Isagenix business and she really is very fluent with it.

And she's also helped me launch my boot camps. And so my goal is for her to really kind of help run, um, a lot of what goes on on those platforms behind the scenes. And she does already, um, but my business coach, you know, has challenged me by saying, you know, instead of feeling like there's so much business, there's gonna be less time with the kids.

You need to figure out what it is that I can delegate in the business so that I still have time with the kids. And that's why I hired her because she helps keep me so business savvy, but she's also a mom, um, making $10 million a year. And she's very, very good at delegating, but also, um, you know, making sure that that's, you can do it.

You can, you just have to be willing to outsource it. I think the biggest challenge Mike is. having your act together enough to delegate ahead of time. What needs to be delegated? 

[01:35:00] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. Right. Getting the right people in place. And 

[01:35:03] Melissa Henault, PharmD: yeah. So I had my call with my executive assistant right before you, and I literally have to give myself an like an hour before my call with her to make sure I have everything together that I need to ask her to pull through 

[01:35:14] Mike Koelzer, Host: two last things.

One is, are you gonna 

write a book? 

[01:35:19] Melissa Henault, PharmD: You know, I've been asked that a couple times right now, maybe one. Um, right now, I'm still in the process of getting a podcast up and running, which I would love for you to be a guest on. Oh, I'd love to one day, maybe in the future. There's so much opportunity with my businesses right now.

I just don't have time. yeah. Why do 

you think I should, 

[01:35:39] Mike Koelzer, Host: do you ever get magnets like sent in the mail 

to you 

[01:35:41] Melissa Henault, PharmD: sometimes from like my real estate agent and stuff? 

[01:35:43] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. Pizza 

or real estate or something. Yeah. And if you get a really good magnet, you know, it's like three by five, a hefty magnet and so on.

They're kind of hard to throw away because of it. I don't know how the hell magnets work, but you kind of think like that's metal or something. I just can't throw that away. There's something to that. 

[01:36:00] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Right. Right, 

[01:36:02] Mike Koelzer, Host: And if you compare a magnet to a flier or something, you say, well, that's just a flier.

I'm just gonna throw that away. But a magnet, you have to at least look at it and, and, you know, wobble it and stuff and make it cool. It's a magnet. I don't know why, but it's cool. But that's what a book is because all the stuff that you're doing now is really cool. Really cool. But it's changing.

It's flowing in that and people say, well, I like that. Cause I like to learn about the new things that are coming and I like to learn about Melissa's changing environment and so on. But the book says. I believe in so much, I'm gonna put it on paper with a cover and I'm the authority, and this is my stamp in time to say, I'm here.

And this is an unchanging time will pass, but it's an unchanging message with my name on it. And it's just powerful. 

[01:36:58] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Yeah. 

[01:36:59] Mike Koelzer, Host: You know, maybe save time and just buy nice magnets. 

[01:37:01] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Right. 

[01:37:02] Mike Koelzer, Host: I think you would do a really nice book. 

[01:37:04] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Aw. Well, thank you. Thank you. You know, it's funny when I was cleaning out my desk, when we moved, um, from our last house and I was retiring from corporate America, I found a sheet of paper that I had to write out my personal mission statement.

When I was in big pharma when I was going through leadership training, one of my biggest missions in life has been to set the example that you can live a healthy well-balanced life, right? And, you know, be happy and healthy, be a great leader, but also be an, a, a very present parent. And I think that's something that a lot of people struggle with.

Um, and it was just so surreal, cleaning out my office, having quit my corporate job and finding that mission statement. And I think that that's where my passion lies so heavily with e-commerce and the business of the 21st century in 2020 that we can have it all. We can build something and, but still have time freedom.

That's your book. 

[01:38:08] Mike Koelzer, Host: Yeah. You need that book for all of your people to point to. Hmm. That's a 

[01:38:15] Melissa Henault, PharmD: good point. Get on that. Yeah. Add that to my anxiety, Mike 

[01:38:20] Mike Koelzer, Host: you know what you do, you hire someone, you get a ghost writer and you sit there and they ask the right questions. And right now someone could take this and they could put this into three or four chapters.

You covered this, you covered that. And then once you get into your podcast, you'll be talking about these things. They listen to someone, some of 'em and they put 'em all together. And you got your 

[01:38:42] Melissa Henault, PharmD: book, huh? I didn't even know that was a thing. Well, I'm not sure either ghost writers, but 

[01:38:47] Mike Koelzer, Host: It sounds like a good idea.

All right. Here's the last question, Melissa. Okay. You talked about this book earlier, this blue ocean. Oh yeah. So good. I think you got the title wrong. I ain't no genius, but listen to my thinking. Okay. Everybody's in a blue ocean. That's the color of the oceans. Are you sure they didn't go to the red ocean?

[01:39:13] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Yeah. So great. The whole premise is that in the red, in the red ocean, it's like a feeding frenzy, right. Where there's a bunch of sharks with all the 

[01:39:22] Mike Koelzer, Host: blood. 

[01:39:23] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Yeah, yeah, yeah, 

[01:39:24] Mike Koelzer, Host: yeah. Ah, see, and you're taking it to a fresh new ocean. Yeah. Without all the 

[01:39:29] Melissa Henault, PharmD: blood that's right. So in a, in a, in a red ocean, everyone is in a competing market trying to one up, do something just slightly different to just differentiate themself.

It's all 

[01:39:41] Mike Koelzer, Host: about the sharks and fighting the 

[01:39:43] Melissa Henault, PharmD: sharks. Right. And so the blue ocean they're that the book is all about instead of, instead of, um, competing. With everyone else, go do something completely different. Right. Um, and create an entirely new market. Okay. And so a market that didn't exist before. And so what you see in a lot of historical MLMs is people chasing down friends and family and downtrodden and desperate folks who like, you know, don't have two pennies to rub together.

Right? Right. I've shifted to a blue ocean of professionals on a professional platform that are looking to build out an asset. They already show up in life. They're not down in the trot. They just are not happy with where they are today. They've got a lot of juice left. They've got a lot of them. They're just not happy with where they are.

And so this is a blue ocean where I can cast a vision and present an opportunity to build an asset, to create the freedom that they truly want. And it's so blue because no one's over there, which is why my LinkedIn boot camp has been so successful because people wanna learn how to, to be on that platform.

Okay. I 

[01:41:00] Mike Koelzer, Host: don't want my listeners staying up at night, like at three in the morning, they're like, Wait a minute that wasn't blue. That was a re you know, I'm doing that as a gift to the 

[01:41:10] Melissa Henault, PharmD: listeners. Yeah. And I'm sure some of your listeners have read the book. I highly recommend it. It'll probably give your, um, independent pharmacy practice or like practice folks, some ideas on how to, how to create a blue ocean market within their pharmacy.

[01:41:27] Mike Koelzer, Host: What I liked about your third business, your third coaching is people get stuck in saying something has to be new. The most creative people define it, basically by taking something that they've experienced somewhere else in a different field, and then moving it to the new field. Yeah. That kind of thing.

Yeah. So, and that's what you're talking about. You're you, you're using what you learned with your first two businesses then, and just moving it over and that's very creative, 

[01:41:55] Melissa Henault, PharmD: right? Absolutely. Well, and that's what my business coach says, you know, you're. future clients, your customers will present to you what they want next, what they need, you know, you know, you're, as, as an entrepreneur, you're constantly thinking about what's the next thing I can put out there.

But if you just ask your consumers many times, they'll tell you, you know, what's the next 

[01:42:17] Mike Koelzer, Host: thing. Ask and listen. Mm-hmm well, Melissa, what a pleasure having on the show. 

[01:42:21] Melissa Henault, PharmD: Yeah. Oh my gosh. I really appreciate, um, you having me on and, um, giving me the opportunity to, to educate, you know, your listeners a little bit and, um, you know, just have this fun conversation.

No, like, and trust. No, like, and trust when you are a hundred percent authentically yourself online, it comes through that way. And people know that people know when you're being your authentic self. So I think you knew what you're getting yourself into when you opened the door. Right? 

[01:42:49] Mike Koelzer, Host: Well, maybe, but I also have the advantage just to never air it.

So that's true. True. very true. But now this one for sure is gonna all right, Melissa, take 

[01:43:02] Melissa Henault, PharmD: care. We'll be in touch. Absolutely. Thanks Mike.