Transcript
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Welcome to Exploring the Marketplace Show, where we're creating a conversation for what
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God's doing to Christians in the marketplace.
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I'm Sean Boles, and my co-host is Bob Hasson.
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We interview everyday influencers, business leaders, and entrepreneurs from all areas
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of industry, exposing you to powerful stories of what God's doing to people just like you.
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We're also sharing our thoughts about what God's doing in finance, business, entertainment,
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and politics.
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Come join the conversation now.
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Welcome to Exploring the Marketplace.
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I'm Bob Hasson with my friend Sean Boles.
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Sean, do we have anything exciting on the show today?
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As always we do.
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We have a TikToker, who's more than just TikToker, but I found around TikToker and also the
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NRB convention, but this is Melissa Hughes, who's a TikToker influencer, international
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speaker bestselling author.
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She's been booked twice, Bob, on Kelly Clarkson, which I think is so fun.
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Wow.
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She's featured for the New York Times bestseller Primal Scream on NBC, and she has over 257,000
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followers and over 11 million likes.
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That's a lot of people who are following her.
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She's a bestselling author of a book.
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She can laugh along with a children's book called Mommy Loves You.
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She's a missionary in the UK for several years.
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I want to ask her about because that's part of the breakdown before Breakthrough Story.
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She's a mom of two kids and a wife of a husband who's about to become a police officer.
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I'm really excited about Melissa Hughes.
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I know there's a lot of people who are trying to figure out the influencer space, whether
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it's a company trying to have influence through the social media world or whether it's somebody
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who's like, this is my space that I do business as an entrepreneur.
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She's ahead of us and actually coaching other people how to do that.
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I want to hear her God story.
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It's going to be great.
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Up next, Melissa Hughes.
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I've got a word that the next great move of God's spirit, like a Jesus people movement
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is going to happen in the workplace, in the marketplace, and we need to hear God right
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now.
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You're working your career, your place of influence, your job, and you're wanting as
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a Christian a God result.
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There has to be a God process to get to that result and we have to hear God.
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My friend Bob Hass and I wrote a book just for you to teach you how to hear God's voice
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in the season of your life to help you in your place of career and your place of business.
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So there's no disconnection between who you are at church, who you are in your family
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and who you are in your career, but it all works together beautifully.
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And I believe that this book is a key book for now to help you understand what God's
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doing.
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Someone encourage you to get this book wired here.
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And if you get it during this month, you'll get the masterclass where Bob and I taught
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on just the themes of the book and help bring it home, help give you some assignments and
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some impartation that's going to bring it right into your very life.
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So I encourage you to get wired to hear now and get our brand new masterclass free when
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you buy the book from BowlsMistries.com.
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Well, welcome back.
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We're here with Melissa Hughes.
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Melissa's so good to have you.
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So great to be here guys.
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Thank you so much for having me on the show today.
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Well, Melissa, most people see you on TikTok or in the social media influencer places and
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just you're so delightful.
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Like you're so just real authentic and share your struggles with your kids, your family,
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what's going on, you coach people all the time.
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You do all these things, which we heard in your bio, but like you have this incredible
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faith story of just things that God's done.
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I mean, you've had to overcome some real disappointments in God at times or some real or maybe in this
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process.
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And I love these stories because I think people, all of us can relate to the times where we
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didn't understand God in our lives or we didn't understand ourselves.
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And you had a time where you and your husband lived above a funeral home.
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What?
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What is this?
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Like I was like reading this line that you lived above a graveyard.
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What are you?
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What is this?
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So take us through this period of time.
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Just, I know this, that's kind of a weird place to start, but I want to go deep past
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this because I feel like when I was reading the notes, this was such a profound story.
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I want to hear it.
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I know our audience is going to want to hear it.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So my husband and I, we were, I was about 25 and I can remember sitting with my husband
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on the airplane and we were just about to move to the UK to plan to church.
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Wow.
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And I don't know, yeah.
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I don't know if you guys have ever had like a dream and you feel like, like, this is it.
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This is the culmination of what this is going to be.
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And we are just so full of faith, so excited.
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And I remember a month after moving there, I'd always wanted to live in the UK since
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I was little.
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I remember a month after moving there, we were sitting in, I was sitting in bath, sipping
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on a cup of tea, eating a scone with jam and cream.
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And I got, it was the best.
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And I got a phone call and it was my husband and he had gone to work that day and he had
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called me and said, Hey, you know, I've been in a bit of an accident, but I'm okay.
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I just need you to come to the hospital.
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And so because he sounded so calm, I was calm, but when I got to the hospital, I opened the
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door and my heart just sank.
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And I saw him stretched out on a, on a bed.
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He was totally high on drugs.
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There were tubes everywhere nurses were scurrying about.
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And my heart just hit the floor.
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And within like the next 24 hours, we found out that he was going to be bedridden.
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He had shattered his leg, broken his collarbone.
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I was going to be his full-time carer.
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At that point, we had no house, no car cause he totaled it.
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Our close family wasn't nearby.
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We had obviously just moved there, no furniture, no forks, like, and you know, very essential
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things and obviously going there to like lead this church.
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And the only place that would rent to us was a funeral home in a valley, like literally
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in the valleys.
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Wow.
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Yeah.
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So we lived there.
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And I remember when that happened, kind of just like telling myself, you know, it's okay.
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You know, God called us here.
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He's with us.
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It's going to be fine.
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But then as like the weeks and the months ticked on, things didn't necessarily get better.
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They felt like they were getting worse.
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As we, my husband's health just like didn't seem to get better.
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The people that we were going to lead the church with, they left.
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And so we took it over and we were hosting meetings in our living room for a while with
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my husband on the house, like in bed.
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And I was pregnant as well.
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Of course.
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And yeah.
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So it was just like, you know, but Christians, you know, they're just the most like, you
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know, just like resilient people and they're like, God is in this, you know, and he was.
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And so I remember just like, you know, it's going to be okay.
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It's going to be fine.
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And I remember somebody called me from home and they said, Hey Melissa, how's it going?
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And I was like, you know, we've had some challenges, but it's going to be good.
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It's going to be fine.
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And there was just like this long pause on the end of the phone.
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And I remember sitting out in my bedroom looking out my window and all I could see were headstones.
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And they just said, Melissa, you know, that it's okay just to say that things are really
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hard right now.
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And I, to be honest with you, I couldn't even get those words out of my mouth because I
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was going to have to answer a question that I was really just so unprepared to answer,
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which was, but if God is good, then why would he call us into something that feels so bad
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right now?
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And I just didn't have an answer, you know?
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And so I just like had to sit in that question and really allow this like honest part, not
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this like toxic positivity, you know, or this like faith statement, but like really allow
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the pain and the disappointment to like rise and really look at that and deal with that.
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And I kind of sat in that for a while.
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And I'll never forget a couple of years later, walking around this park by my house, it was
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like the, the bliss.
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It was this beautiful park by my house, my two children, and just praying and saying,
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God, you know, how could anything really good come from this?
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And I really, truly felt like God almost like bent down and whispered into such a tender
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chamber of my heart.
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And he said, mountaintop experiences are for sights and inspiration, but the fruit grows
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in the valleys.
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And I just had this like moment where I realized I wanted this like pain free life, but I felt
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like God was entrusting to me a profound life because you can't have a triumph without a
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tragedy or love greatly or risk or with or risk without experiencing heartache or failure.
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And I really saw the cross, you know, the cross, the resurrection and the cross.
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So amazing.
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You know, when you first said you were in a valley, I just went to, you know, hey, the
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scripture in song, the valley of the shadow of death, you're, and then you lie down beside
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three pastors and the Lord had showed you like we were used to seeing on social media
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highlight reels.
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But what happens behind the scenes is real life.
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And you're on the phone call with who said to you, it's okay to say you're not okay.
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I think unlock something in you because God is good all the time, no matter what our circumstances
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are.
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And you just prove that to us through your story.
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It's such a beautiful story.
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And I'm assuming your husband recovered and he's doing well now and talk to us about that.
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And what are you doing now as you're back in the States?
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Yeah, I want to say with that too, like talk about like, how did an influencer platform
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come?
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So we want to hear about your husband, we want to hear about your family, but how did it
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influence?
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Because that's a pretty strange platform to emerge into.
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And it's usually only done by the grace of God.
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Go ahead.
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Yeah, no, 100%.
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It was the grace of God.
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My husband's doing really well.
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Hey, it was a long road to recovery.
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He finally got the rod taken out of his leg.
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He's doing great by the grace and the goodness of God.
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But how the influencer platform came was when my husband and I finished church planting
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over there, we were there for about four years, we moved home.
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The pandemic happened, like right then.
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And so we were living with my in-laws and we needed to like get a house, get forks,
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right?
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Get a crop, like get all the things.
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I like the forks name.
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This is good.
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It's forks.
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You know, we'll think about that, but it's like.
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It's a sort of a package of the forks.
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Yeah, that we didn't have.
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So I ended up taking a job working in childcare because that was, you know, that was the job
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at the time.
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But it was so painful for me because, you know, for any mom listening right now, I feel
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like you either want a thriving career or you want to be at home with your children.
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And I wanted to be at home with my kids.
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And so I got this job working childcare where I'm dropping my kids off at one end of the
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building and going and looking after somebody else's.
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And I was just like, Lord, come on.
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Like, and this is me being honest now.
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We're through the toxic positivity.
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This is me having an honest chance at the Lord being like, you know, God, like, what
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do you do it?
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Like what's this next step?
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And I'm sure a lot of people were praying that prayer during COVID.
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But because of where we come from to I really was like, where is this going?
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And so one day I was listening to Focus on the Family.
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I love Focus on the Family.
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I think they've done amazing things mobilizing the gospel and I was listening to Focus on
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the Family, driving to work.
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And at that point, I had just spent the evening on indeed looking for jobs.
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And it just every job I looked for just looked unqualified, unqualified, even though I have
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a degree in exercise science, unless you want to physical therapy, you're not.
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So it was like business degree, unqualified admin, unqualified.
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And so I'm listening to Focus on the Family, driving to work.
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And I just was like, God, what should I do?
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And he just I felt like he asked me this question.
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He said, Melissa, what do you want to do?
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And I was like, look, God, if we're going to be real honest, like real, real honest,
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the only thing that I'm genuinely really good at is talking.
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So if I could just have a job, like Focus on the Family, Jim Daly, if I could just talk
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to people all day, that would be great.
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And literally a month later, I felt God started speaking to me about posting videos online.
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Random, super random.
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I felt like a crazy person, though, because anywhere I looked, it was like, I just felt
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this excitement bubbling up in me and like this thing that I should start posting videos
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online.
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So I talked to my husband about it and said, I feel like I should post these videos.
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So we prayed, God, if this is something Melissa should do, would you just make it clear?
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And five days later, I uploaded this video onto TikTok.
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It was the very first video on my phone.
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I was trying to figure out how to even post or what TikTok was.
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And the next morning I woke up that video generated 22 million views and I ended up
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on my books and show.
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Wait, wait, what was the video about?
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I saw it on the confirmation.
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Exactly.
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I'm sorry.
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What was the video about?
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Yeah, it was a video of my kids.
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It was a mom fail.
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It was a video of my kids, which I love that I represent the mom fail community.
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That's how I feel like all moms feel at times, but it was a video of my kids sledding and
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I pushed them down the sledding hill.
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It was actually near my in-laws by their driveway because we were living there.
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And they went down and they picked up speed and the sled hit a bump and then it looked
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like they were going down the street and you can hear my daughter going, mommy.
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They were just going down the driveway, but it was just a funny, it was like a seven second
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clip, just not mega viral.
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Yeah.
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And you ended up with Kelly Clarkson.
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Yes, and the Kelly Clarkson show reached out to me and everyone's like, Melissa, that's
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so exciting.
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But to be honest, I was stressed.
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I thought that it was broken.
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I had no idea what was going on.
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That was not my world.
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I had no idea about content creation.
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Kelly Clarkson.
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So, and I didn't know what to do with that.
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So I literally just started figuring out how to post videos in my car on my lunch break
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while working a full-time job in childcare.
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I guess that's so normal though to me in the sense of the story of people who got either
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anoints or they just have a natural knack.
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If it's not a God mission, if it's just people who are on social media, they just start to
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post and they're authentic and the world relates to them.
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And for you, it feels like it's something that God wanted because your videos are very
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like, okay, here's where I, you know, my son was upset.
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And during a tantrum, and it was because I just got this idea to ask him the question,
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like what do you think you're upset about?
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And it's because he wanted to play with us, whatever characters.
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And he didn't want to clean this room where he didn't want to.
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And you're just being really real as far as like, I thought of a question to ask him.
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And I think everyone's looking for fun, funny content, help, raising family.
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That's what you're all about.
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So it doesn't surprise me at all because you're just, you know, you're very real.
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It's just like you've learned how to be real with God.
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I feel like you're being real with us as your audience.
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Talk about like, how did this become like your full-time focus then?
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Or how did this become like your focus as far as life?
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Yeah, yeah.
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Well, you know, when I was creating the content and posting in my car, I had no idea where
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this was going.
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The only thing I felt God say was post videos, but I didn't know that it could actually,
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I knew that there was an influencer industry.
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I didn't know anything about it.
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And I didn't know that it could actually turn into a career until somebody said to me, Melissa,
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why don't you teach people how to do this?
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And my very first response was nobody would pay me for that.
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And I really want to like camp on that for a minute because so many people right now
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probably have an incredible gift skill or ability that would be so valuable for someone
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that they would think nobody would pay me for that.
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But it's crazy now being in this world, what people will pay you for the knowledge that
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you think is just people should know this, but it's super valuable.
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And so, but I was so like, no one would pay me for that, that the person asked me, they
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said, well, Melissa, how much money do you need to make to be able to be an entrepreneur
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to go out on your own?
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And I said, well, working 40 hours a week, I make probably $2,000 a month.
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And then I probably need $500 for like health insurance.
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And so probably like $2,500 a month.
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And he just went to his friend who ran like a very successful business and said, hey,
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so my friend, Melissa, she does social media consulting.
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And I know you have this podcast, but she can help you like put it on TikTok.
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Do you want to hire her?
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And he goes, yeah, absolutely.
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How much does she charge?
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He goes, oh, she charges $2,500 a month.
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And he landed me, my first client, and he came to me.
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I got you first client.
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And I was like, I was petrified.
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And I took it and then I quit.
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I quit childcare and literally stumbled into entrepreneurship.
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That's so awesome.
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How did that go with that first podcast?
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And I'm sure it was a huge learning curve.
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It was a huge learning curve and it went awesome.
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It went great.
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I grew his account, but it was, I just, I didn't have the confidence and I didn't know, I didn't
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know what I was doing, which funny enough, like we said, when you are starting out, that
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is the path to success.
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You don't know what you're doing until you take action on it, just like Jesus says, like
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get out of the boat.
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And you have to just like tap in faith and then it works.
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So this whole journey has just been like taking a step and being like, oh, it works or it
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doesn't work.
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And then you just try again.
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Yeah.
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The funny thing, I realized this, I was in 2017, I was about to be 60.
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I was 58 and I wrote a book and people wanted me to start talking to them.
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And I thought, what do they want to hear from me for?
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Everybody who knows this stuff.
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And even at my age, way more advanced than you, I just learned that people do need to
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hear voices and the time that it takes to become confident in who you are, it is amazing.
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And I see a confidence in you to a point now where I'm sure like you're hearing God as
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you're going to business conferences, as you're consulting with people.
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It's like a secret weapon, isn't it?
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Yes.
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I have found business because when we were in church world for 10 years and my passion
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in my heart was evangelism, I loved and I still do now, stop people in the grocery store.
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If God speaks to me, I have no problem praying for people.
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But now I feel like business is like my open door where people come to me for how do you
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market this and how do I get on here?
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And then we get into sessions and God will speak to me for them and I can give them prophetic
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words, icons and people in business.
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That's hugely valuable and be able to get prophetic downloads for people and what they're
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called to do.
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It's just been so exciting seeing God move in business settings.
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Yeah.
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And I know at one point when you were doing a coaching, you started to get exhausted because
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there was so much demand.
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When something happened, tell us what happened when you started to just walk with God through
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this journey of like, no, I'm doing this, but now there's so many people who want it
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and I don't have enough capacity.
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Yes.
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Yes.
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So I started the quickest way to start monetizing your gifts is coaching.
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And so I started coaching people, right?
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Showing up on video and that was taking up a lot of my time.
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And for me, like my goal is I want to be a better mom and a better wife, but you know,
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when you start coaching all the time, I was finding it was taking up all my time and I'm
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like, I don't want to do this.
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And so I just said to God, you know, I need to figure out a way to make this scalable and
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I can't do that if I'm doing one on one calls all the time.
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And so I ended up meeting a man who we ended up, he had me on his podcast and we ended
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up talking.
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He's like, so what do you want to do now?
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And I was sharing with him.
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Yeah, this is like my challenge.
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And he goes, oh, I just sold a business with a whole like team of VAs.
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And if you want, like we could just build out an agency.
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And I was like, would you, would you build out an agency?
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He's like, yeah, I got this team.
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I was like, okay.
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And so we, so we literally just built out an agency and it's just he got every literally
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every step of the journey.
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I feel like it's been God helping me just, and I feel like too, I have to say that people
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might be listening to this being like, well, that's great for you.
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Open door after open door.
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But I'm so grateful for the Valley because I went like, if I didn't have the Valley that
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those four years I felt like when I was flexing my biggest faith muscle and nothing worked,
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then I could maybe think that this has something to do with me, but I know that it's all about
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you know what I'm saying.
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And our Valley is probably weren't engraved yards above a funeral home.
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So that's great.
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Yeah, literally, we lived in the Valley of the shadow of death.
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We've talked about, we've talked about all this, but you've written books.
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And how do people find your books?
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How do people find you if they want to be coached by you?
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How do people find you on TikTok and social media?
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Yeah.
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So I'm on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook at Melissa Lee Hughes.
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And then I also have an offer for your audience that if people want to get three steps to
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getting clarity on their brand message, because before you can put yourself out there, you
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really have to understand who you are and what it is that you offer before you post.
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Or you can do it like me where you just post and you figure out along the way.
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If you can really get clarity first, then you can really start to understand what it
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is that you have to offer.
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So I have a three step process to give to your audience.
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If that's something that would be valuable for you guys.
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Of course.
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How did you get that offer?
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Yeah.
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So it's a link.
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Yeah, I'll put the link.
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I'll give you the link.
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It's gonna be in the show notes.
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Yeah.
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People are gonna love this so much because I know a lot of people who are even, maybe
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they've had a lot of influences in their business or over their church or over whatever
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they're doing, but they don't know how to translate that into the greater world, especially
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in social media.
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So I think it's gonna be so valuable for people.
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If you're listening right now in this resume with you, make sure to get that.
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It's a free link.
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Yeah.
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And it'd be so good to be coached by Melissa as well and her team.
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But we're so glad you were on today.
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Thanks so much for sharing just from your heart.
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It was so valuable.
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Yeah.
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Thank you so much.
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I'm so excited and so grateful for the impact that you guys have made through this podcast
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and through the ministry that God's given both of you.
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Thanks again, Melissa.
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And up next, we have Final Box with Sean Bolz.
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I'm Sean Bolz and I'm gonna invite you to our Spiritual Growth Academy online where you
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can attend a four-week class or an event every month.
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Plus our back catalog is available to you as well on spiritual gifts, especially hearing
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God's voice and also a deeper connection to the Holy Spirit and how to walk with him
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in real ways in the days we're living in right now.
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Come join us at Spiritual Growth Academy by going to Bolzministries.com and clicking on
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the Academy button.
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Welcome back to Final Thoughts, Sean.
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Wow, she was so interesting to listen to and encouraging.
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Yeah, I think that whole theme that we went through of the valleys, you know, just where
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there's some people right now, I know many of you are listening or watching or going
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through your valley.
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It's like not the easy part.
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And maybe just her vulnerability of sitting in that question and going, it's okay to
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not have toxic positivity where everything's okay all the time as a Christian.
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You just actually go, this is hard and I need help and I need new language.
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I need new anchors in my faith.
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I need all those things.
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And it was so great to hear that because before she had this incredible breakthrough of opportunities,
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she had to go through that period of time.
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And I know many people, it's 2023, 2024, it's not an easy time in the world.
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I mean, there's more natural disasters in a condensed period of time than there has
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been in modern history.
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There's more war type activities happening.
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The economy has been shaken to the core.
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I was meeting with a partnership specialist the other day just for our own ministry partnership.
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And he was just, he was giving us advice for how to develop more of our donor base.
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And he said that donor bases across the border down so much so that there's a collapse of
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a lot of ministries and a lot of organizations who have required donors.
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And it was just so, it's such a sad time unless you're in faith, which can't be in
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faith in a pretend positive way.
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You have to be in faith, but actually being honest with God.
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I loved her honesty because I think it's a perfect placeholder in the conversation we
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need to have with God.
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It's a great, it's a great thing to listen to.
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And to me, you know, hearing her story, she had a phone call with somebody who said to
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her, it's okay not to be okay.
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Yeah.
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And this is what community is for.
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This is what covenant relationships are for, for us to be able to be honest with one another
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in order to get through this life that is, that is confusing.
471
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That's not always easy.
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00:26:26,440 --> 00:26:29,920
That's not always a better roses.
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We came to faith.
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We, we, we, we received eternal life, but, but there was no promise that it was all going
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to be, you know, this beauty with no problems.
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00:26:39,840 --> 00:26:43,880
And as a matter of fact, the scripture tells us over and over and over again how to deal
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with these things.
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00:26:45,120 --> 00:26:49,000
And I think her story was so beautiful about how they did get through it.
479
00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:54,760
And the imagery of living above a funeral home, overlooking a graveyard in a valley was
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just so representative of so many of our struggles and trials.
481
00:27:00,280 --> 00:27:04,160
I, I just thought her story of overcoming it was beautiful.
482
00:27:04,160 --> 00:27:08,280
Well, Bob, and I know that you're going to get through it with faith in Jesus.
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He's going to take you places that you never thought you'd get to, but you have to walk
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with them to get there.
485
00:27:12,960 --> 00:27:16,320
And so just plug in those relationships and especially a relationship with Jesus.
486
00:27:16,320 --> 00:27:20,040
And even enjoying the show, please leave us a review on whatever podcast server you use
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00:27:20,040 --> 00:27:22,040
or write us at infoablesministries.com.
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00:27:22,040 --> 00:27:26,040
A testimony of how this show or one of our guests affected your life.
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00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:27,040
We love you guys.
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00:27:27,040 --> 00:27:30,400
We love doing this podcast with you and season four is coming up soon.
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00:27:30,400 --> 00:27:33,960
So make sure to keep hitting those notification buttons so you can be a part of season four.
492
00:27:33,960 --> 00:27:35,560
We have a lot of changes in store.
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00:27:35,560 --> 00:27:36,560
I'm looking forward to it.
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00:27:36,560 --> 00:27:37,560
I know you are too, Bob.
495
00:27:37,560 --> 00:27:38,560
Yeah, I am.
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I can't wait to see what they are.
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I know exactly.
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00:27:40,560 --> 00:27:41,560
We'll see you guys next time.
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00:27:41,560 --> 00:27:42,560
I'm exploring the marketplace.
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00:27:42,560 --> 00:27:46,280
Thanks for exploring what God is doing in the marketplace with us.
501
00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:50,920
And we have amazing resources for you at our website with free videos, taking online classes
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00:27:50,920 --> 00:27:54,880
that are online school, spiritual growth Academy, or get one of our books, including the one
503
00:27:54,880 --> 00:27:57,640
Bob and I authored together wired to here.
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00:27:57,640 --> 00:27:59,800
We have lots of ways to connect with you.
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00:27:59,800 --> 00:28:01,400
Come visit us on social media.
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00:28:01,400 --> 00:28:06,960
Just look for at Sean Bowles or at Bob Hasson or visit Bowlesministries.com.
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00:28:06,960 --> 00:28:10,280
This show is made possible by listeners just like you.
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00:28:10,280 --> 00:28:13,320
Become a partner or donate now to become part of our team.
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00:28:13,320 --> 00:28:16,560
If you enjoyed today's episode, share it on your socials or help us review it on the
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00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:18,320
podcast server you found us on.
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See you next time.