'Luck' in business is just the markets: Stephanie Melodia on The Black Belt in Leadership podcast with Aslak de Silva

Welcome to The Black Belt in Leadership podcast. I'm your host, Aslak de Silva.

Some people seem to get lucky. The right timing, the right connections, the right opportunities appearing at the right moment. But when you look closer, it's really isn't just luck.

There's usually something underneath it, a way of operating, a way of staying in the game long enough for those moments to happen. And what I've seen both in business and in fighting, is that when those moments don't come, something else can take over. Desperation.

And that changes how people behave. It changes decisions, communications, and often pushes people away from the very opportunities they are trying to create. Today I want to explore that tension, how luck is created, and what happens when it doesn't show up fast enough.

I'm joined by Stephanie Melodia, a British entrepreneur, growth strategist and keynote speaker. Known from her work in growth, marketing, brand building and entrepreneurship, she is the founder and award-winning marketing agency Bloom, has been recognised as one of the top 20 most influential female founders and also hosts Strategy & Tragedy podcast, a UK Top 20 Business Podcast.

Stephanie, great to have you here.

SM: Thank you for having me. And I feel like I must apologise for the way that I name my projects. I feel like everything is a tongue twister, Strategy & Tragedy. Even my name's a bit tricky. But well done. You got through it!

ADS: Thank you. I think as a business leader, the word strategy itself, I've been saying it in podcast, that's the most difficult word to say it out loud. And you then add up the strategy after that. So even more difficult.

SM: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

ADS: Yeah. But let's start with luck. I mean, the idea of luck, because it's something people refer to a lot in entrepreneurship. From your perspective, working with founders and through your podcast conversation, what does luck actually look like in reality?

SM: Okay, love, we're starting strong with my signature topic on hacking luck, and I feel like we could talk for hours just on this topic. So revving things up, luck is essentially anything that's outside of your control. It's an externality that you manipulate. Right. And just recently I posted an article on LinkedIn which describes how luck in business is the market. Right. On a personal level, we can all relate to luck. We can all point back to a moment in time where we felt particularly lucky or unlucky or we know people who have got too much good luck, you know, on their. On their side, and we don't understand how it's working out for them. But the business translation of that is the market.

Because you could have the superstar team. A genius idea, tons of funding, slick branding. But if you don't have the market, or if the market suddenly shifts, which is what we're seeing now with so much volatility, that's again, essentially the business translation of luck is the markets.

It's something that is outside of your control, something that you cannot manipulate and yet still has the biggest bearing on of success or failure in whatever it is that you do.

ADS: But that's maybe a different angle for the term of luck than many others. How did you come up with that?

SM: Luck, again, is. I would just put it down to something that is an externality, something that is outside of your control. It is also a very powerful force that does have more of a bearing on your success or failure than we all like to think.

So there was actually some very interesting scientific research that was done by a team of Italian economists, economists and physicists. They all got together to actually put this to the test, to actually explore what has the biggest bearing on success or failure.

And what they looked at was between talent, effort, and luck, which one would have the greatest impact? And of course, spoiler alert, here it was luck. It was a really interesting study. I can share more details afterwards. But basically, they quantified success as personal financial wealth, basically. And so in this instance, you know, luck was defined as where you were born, who you were born to, what you were born as. These fundamental things that are outside of our control and yet still have the biggest bearing on our success or failure.

And so that's how I connect it back to the business translation, which is the market. It's an externality that's out of our control, and it's also the factor that has the biggest bearing on our success or failure.

ADS: Very interesting. I love that it's more comprehensive than just a single moment that, did you get lucky? Something else there? We tend to look at some entrepreneurs and say that you just got lucky, and maybe we sometimes envy them that you are more lucky. So, so what are these people who get more of that luck? Maybe. What do they do differently?

SM: Well, I love that you mentioned entrepreneurs specifically, because entrepreneurs are the segment of the population that are literally the best at creating their own luck, right? We've all heard that saying,"create your own luck" and entrepreneurs, of course, we're ambitious hustlers, we're doers. We're not going to sit around and wait for lady luck to enter the equation. We're going to take control of it. We're going to hack Luck. And so entrepreneurship has been my world for the past decade and a half.

I started my first business back in 2017, which was the marketing agency that you mentioned. I have now moved on from that chapter. In 2023, I went on to host the Top 20 UK Business show that you mentioned, the Tongue Twister Strategy and Tragedy, where I've now interviewed over 120 entrepreneurs. I'm also a mentor to MBA students in entrepreneurship coach one on one private clients. All that is to say is I have amassed and analyzed multitudes, hundreds of firsthand data points as it relates to entrepreneurship. I've had those lived experiences running and building my own businesses.

And then if you combine that with the scientific research that's already out there, it all points to the same thing, which is luck is a powerful force that does exist. And I set out to explore can you create your own luck?

And of course all, all of these hundreds of entrepreneurs have proven that yes, of course you can create your own luck. And so where I've distilled that down into an eight principle framework of exactly how to stack the odds in your favour

ADS: Now I'm interested in knowing how do you create the luck then?

SM: Well, let me give you a bit of a tease. So there's eight core principles. The first four relate to mindset. The other four are the practical actions. So would you like to hear list out the eight?

ADS: Yes.

SM: Okay. Amazing. So number one one is agency. Now we start with our inner selves, we start with the mindset because there's no point moving into action mode and doing all these different things if we're not in the right headspace, if we don't believe that these things are possible for us.

And so number one is starting with a agency. So agency is about radical accountability. So you may have heard of the book Radical Candor. Quite a best the name bit. Right. So it's kind of like radical calendar but with accountability.

Radical accountability, it is essentially the most self empowering thing you can do, which is knowing that you do have agency, that you are self empowered, that you don't play the blame game, it's not someone else's fault, it's not because of this or it's that a part of that agency goes back to controlling the controllables.

Right. So I mentioned before, luck is essentially an externality that's outside of our control. And that can be things like where you were born, what you were born as, when you were born, to whom you were born. Obviously those things we cannot do anything about.

So that's the Very first step is agency that's focusing on controlling the controller was what can we do? And part of that is being severely allergic to victimhood. Right?

It's not about learned helplessness, it's not about someone else will solve this or someone else will come along and save the day. This is again where these insights are born from this world of entrepreneurship, right?

Because entrepreneurs don't sit around and wait for someone else to come and save the day, they go and sort it out themselves. So that's number one agency. The second one is openness. So it is being open minded to these opportunities.

And there's a concept called effectual thinking, which is all about kind of being open to possibility, open to exploring, open to seeing where could something kind of lead to.

And it's kind of radical in this day and age, given that we live in such a goal obsessed world where we set our sights on a target, we have news resolutions, we have all these goals, these aims, especially in business, you know, what is it we're working towards.

But the openness side of this is let's kind of be open to see kind of what is in store. How can synchronicity start to play a part in our lives? What that next one feeds into is optimism. So that is having the positivity, it's having that optimistic mindset.

It's also being grateful, which energizes you for the fourth point, which is resilience. Slow by being grateful. That feeds into having the energy to stay around. You mentioned desperation at the start. I'd love to dive into that as well.

But resilience is part of that, is kind of staying around for long enough. And then we've got network visibility, taking risks. And the final one is called zagging, which nicely ends with a Z. So we've got from A to zagging is about going against the grain.

It's about doing things differently, it's about doing the unpredictable, it's about not taking the sensible strategy because that's what every one of your competitors is going to be doing. It's about really thinking outside of the box. It's about going against the grain, doing things differently.

And that's a really savvy way to shortcut your way to hacking luck. So that's a very brief overview. I go into each and every single one of those in my workshops and trainings. But that top level, those are the eight principles across mindset and actions to help you hack luck.

Very good. Thanks for the brief introduction and I hope that some of the listeners go and really dig in and learn from you from there. If you had to name one or two of those that are most maybe scarce or most difficult to have or get. So what would you say that. Pay more attention to this.

Great question. At first I thought you were going to say which ones are my favorites and that would be which ones are the hardest. I would definitely say one of the mindset ones. I think it's either the agency or the optimism I think are the hardest.

Because the reason I say that is thankfully in today's day and age, we have destigmatized mental health. There's this movement to kind of train our brains in the same way we train our bodies. But of course it's not as measurable or as physical as it is.

You know, going to the gym, you were telling me before that you went to work out earlier, right. It's like we can both go to the, the gym. We can see how much weight we lift, we can see how many calories we've burnt. We can't do the same with our mental health at the moment. Right.

It's more of a self assessment sort of score. And so that's why I say these ones are the hardest because number one, you need to have a level of self awareness and an honesty to yourself to know actually how, like how optimistic really do you think you are?

How much of that sense of agency do you think you have?

Because our, our, our thought patterns, the way that we keep thinking, they create these neural pathways that get trodden down kind of over time and it becomes so much easier to fall into those same, well, trodden grooves that we've created in our minds. And these stories we tell ourselves.

And so we believe it's true. We believe the stories we tell ourselves are the truth. Right?

Yeah.

So this is where it's kind of like the Matrix. What's real, what's our perception? I think this is the hardest is to really ask yourself, do you really believe that you have total sense of agency or do you from time to time fall into the trap of victimhood? I know myself, I definitely do.

Sometimes it is the easiest thing to blame other people, to blame the situation, to blame geopolitics, to blame whatever. Right. And so it's kind of that checking back in with yourself, like, are you empowering yourself by choosing certain narratives to believe? And, and the same with optimism.

Are you falling into the trap again? It's, it's, it's less energy, it's less effort to be the victim, it's less energy and effort to complain, to be negative about something. It requires like, 10 times more energy to counterbalance and to be positive and to be proactive about a situation.

So maybe for listeners, check in with yourself now and sort of say, on a scale of 1 to how much agency do I genuinely believe that I have and how much of an optimistic mindset have I got to truly be able to embrace the system of hacking luck?

What's the role of kind of being honest to yourself and being, like, authentic in this? What do you say? Because of course we love these pep talks. I do it myself as well that today we have a good day. I'll push my best. But then sometimes you feel like, well, it's not going to be the best day, but.

But I said it would be. So I have to push for that. So what's the level of authenticity that you should have for yourself in these kind of talks when you have with yourself?

Yeah, 100% authenticity. Yeah, of course. Because who else are you kidding? You're not here to kid yourself, are you? So you've got to genuinely believe that you've got to be in that right mindset in order for it to happen.

And I think what's also fascinating from a neuroscience perspective is with the ras, it stands for the reticular activating system. It is that superpower we have of pattern matching. And it's the things that we. That we decide whether or not we notice or how much attention we put on something.

And I have seen through some other people how easy it is to not notice some things and to notice others. And I've recognized in myself I'm very, very grateful and very lucky to be able to say that more often than not, comparatively, I am seeing the positive.

Let me just tell you a really quick story. Just because I have this coffee cup here, I. I popped into this coffee shop this morning. It's just down the road from where I live, right? I went out to stretch my legs, get some fresh air, grab this coffee.

When I went into this coffee shop, I saw someone that I recognized. So I went over, I said hi, chatting with them. So that's another core component of hacking luck is the network piece. It's other people, right?

So putting yourself out there, saying, hi, I'd already placed my order for the coffee, and I'm chatting to this friend. Time's going on, but I'm fine, I'm happy. I'm chatting to this person. After a while, you know, she goes, didn't you order a coffee? Like, where's that coffee? Is it coming?

So I turned to the staff, I was like, oh, did like, is my coffee coming? What's happening? And yeah, so sorry it's coming your way. Anyway, because they must have forgotten or it took a while. They presented me with this cup and they said, here you go, it's on the house, no worries.

I was like, oh my goodness, thank you so much. Super grateful. I had a loyalty card I wanted them to stamp. They still gave me the stamp anyway, and I was telling my friend all about this concept of hacking luck. And here we are, bumped into this friend, I've got this free coffee.

And I pointed to the pup down, I was like, look, free coffee. And she was like, oh my goodness. Yeah. And so it's, I'm just telling that as a, as a very fresh story that just happened today. Right. But it's an example of what we decide to notice or not.

And so look, whether or not there's, you know, some higher being that's, that's making Stephanie Melodia the luckiest girl in the world, who knows? But the, the fact is, is that I've chosen to believe it. And by that I create an upward spiral for myself.

Yeah.

So as I practice gratitude for this free coffee, it's helping me to notice other things that go your way. So that is full circle back to the reticular activating system.

It's your pattern matching machine in your brain that is better than any AI, at least for the moment, that does that pattern recognition and spots either the good or the bad. The good create the upward spiral, the bad creates a downward spiral.

But let's then go into the downward spiral. I mean, I was a CEO for Nordic Business Forum when COVID 19 hit. And we had a big event, sold out event coming or almost sold out that time. So there was more than six months to go for the event end of September and Covid in March.

And we had an insurance like I know Wimbledon has had as well, so to kind of COVID the cost. But the problem was that they were not kind of, you couldn't cancel the event yet because the situation could change. And I saw myself like leading.

So I was talking with the team members, we had to go remote. So I think I found a good kind of way to work with that. But I didn't find a good way like, okay, but we need that insurance coverage, we need the confirmation.

So I remember like I got in despair that I was almost like clicking the email that is it coming? Are they saying that we're safe and all that? And I can see that, how that impacted my decision making, how that impacted me as a person.

So you talk with hundreds of entrepreneurs, so I'm sure that somebody else has been in the same situation where desperation is super strong and then you just maybe freeze up. Even you cannot do any decisions. And you are might go to the victimized mindset you were mentioning there.

But is that common or what's there?

Look, this is why, very interesting that the first component of hacking luck is agency. And you just mentioned victimhood there, which is the opposite. Right. And that's what comes to mind for me, is operating from a place of power as opposed to shifting that power onto somebody else.

Now look, we need to be real here as well. I'm not going to talk about, you know, I'm not going to go too woo woo with this, but the fact of the matter is you have an insurance company, you have an event. This is the reality of this situation.

But I, I have of course dealt with so many entrepreneurs where things have come out of left field. But what struck me about some of the most successful ones is how they've been able to, to come up with some sort of a creative solution. Again, sticking with the first principle of agency.

What is in my power, what is in my control? Focus on that control, the controllable. Because one thing is that energy that you're emitting, which I would love to talk about separately. But it's moving yourself out of that desperate energy that's shifting that power onto someone else.

You're reclaiming that power and saying, okay, what is it that I can do? It also opens you up and puts you in a slightly more relaxed state to come up with some sort of creative solution. And then the best of the best have somehow found a way to use it to their advantage in one way or another.

Right?

So whether it's been leveraging the situation to generate a PR story, right, and get some additional like press coverage from something like, I'll give you a really quick example, somebody, a couple of people that I know actually they received a cease and desist letter for, for the brand name, they're using someone else's, it was apparently trademarked.

And both of these instances they actually use them to their advantage because they were like, okay, we weren't that attached to the name anyway, they came up with something even better and they generated all this press coverage off the back of it.

So it ended up creating more publicity for them than it would have otherwise and actually a better name. And I think at the time the name they'd had because someone else had it. They couldn't get the URL, they couldn't get the domain.

And then because they'd come up with something better, because by this point, they'd already been in business a few years, so they were able to use something that was more relevant and kind of cut through a little bit more.

So that's just one random example as to how they've not only, you know, reclaimed the power and done something with it, but actually found a silver lining.

What if the situation is really, really bad? I mean, you're raising money and all the answers are no, and you're not gonna go through. And like, it's not even a small adjustment, but it's more like that you really need to reinvent yourself. So, yeah, that be done.

Yeah, yeah, look, there's shades of gray, right? There's a part of me that definitely says you need to exercise resilience. Everyone gets their door slammed in their face. Everyone gets lots of no's. You know, there's that.

One of my favorite sayings is it takes a thousand nights to become an overnight success. You know, but then there is another part of me. If you're saying, you know, it's really, really, really bad, then another quote is rejection is redirection. Like, maybe you are flogging a dead horse.

And actually, if this is draining you that much and it's that hard and things just really are not going your way, then maybe this is putting you on a different, better path.

Yeah. When I was coaching martial arts and fighters, so. So when they said that they cannot beat the opponent, so I said that, okay, but then what? Yeah, I would give them a post. Then what? They were like, yeah, but I cannot beat. I said, then what?

So that they would really make the decision themselves. It's totally fine to give up. It's totally fine to say that I'm not gonna do that. But it's also the question that, okay, you know, that situation, that's what you think.

Think.

What are you gonna do? And that pause and that kind of maybe even pushing you to the limit to really think that what you. What are you gonna do? Not what you want to do, what are you gonna do? And. And some fighters, they came great out of that and some didn't, but.

But I noticed that in a way that that was super crucial that they had to stop think and then decide that, okay, what am I gonna do?

Yeah, Yeah, I love that. So what are we going to do about it?

Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes it's simple as that, but I'm not saying but I remember when I was at the Nordic Business Forum and the CEO so I kind of, it wasn't still easy. I knew the kind of the resilience training, I talk about it myself but it wasn't easy in that moment.

But in the end things, they just kind of resolve. So I mean the good or bad way and then you just have to find your path again. If it was a bad way.

100%. Yeah, exactly.

I totally, yeah. But you, you mentioned there also resilience and, and, and how to train that. So, so what's your kind of go to strategy to build resilience?

I love this one. This is another like core component of hacking luck. If I, if you were going to ask my favorites it would be risk and resilience like the R and R. I think those are the big ones there with resilience. So I just recorded a whole podcast on this as well. So very timely.

Surprisingly the best strategy to develop resilience. It's stupid, unexpected, it's very counterintuitive and I'm not sure if I've heard many people talk about this before, but it's actually about having fun. It's about being joyful, it's about being playful, it's about embracing fun along the way.

And we've all heard the cliches, right? It's like it's about the journey, not the destination. You know, if you enjoy what you're doing, it doesn't feel like work, you know, fun.

And I, I've seen this from some of the most successful entrepreneurs that I've worked with, I've interviewed where they have a mindset they've developed which retains a level of perspective that doesn't let the day to day drag them down so much.

So as a quick example, Timothy AMU is a top British entrepreneur that I interviewed. He sold his business called Fanbytes in I think an eight, an eight figure deal. And his mantra in life is it's not that deep.

To be fair, he has gone through some very bad like family tragedies and I do think that these the worst of the worst, you know, do help you get that perspective and do help you to not take these things so seriously. But that is his mantra is it's not that deep.

So when an investment deal falls through, when a client cancels the contract, when someone you're about to hire has just pulled out, if you need to fire a team member, whatever the case is, and he went through a lot of these, it's not that deep? It's not that deep. We move on, we'll figure it out.

And it's the choice in the moment. It does connect back to that sense of agency because we don't always realize how much choice we have.

We allow ourselves to get absorbed by these situations, to kind of wallow and really, you know, when we do complain to other people about things, they're kind of a cry for help, you know, which is obviously totally normal and healthy. And I do it all the time.

But after your cry for help, after you've, you know, gone through your emotional turmoil, it's coming back to your point, okay, so what are we going to do about it? And so first of all, is having that perspective of it's not that deep. Don't let it affect you so much.

Regaining that sense of perspective. And then on the fun piece, if you can cultivate a workplace that has some joy, where it is fun to come to work, where you can have a laugh, I guarantee the team that is having the most fun is going to outlast any other competition.

You will never be someone who loves what they do, who enjoys doing it, and is having the best time along the way. And so it feeds back into the energy that you need for resilience.

Resilience is a word, you know, what it conjures for me are these connotations of fist clenching and like teeth gritting and just, we need to get through these challenging times.

But if you're able to take this unorthodox alternative advice, then actually that resilience piece becomes a lot easier to withstand these long periods of time that are required in business.

But what do you tell then to people who say that, well, but you need to be professional, and you're not professional if you're having too much fun. So what's your argument against them?

Again, there is some nuance. And honestly, I really do value professionalism. Right. I think it depends on how you're incentivizing people at the end of the day. What's the motivations? How are you incentivizing their performance?

I think now more than ever with flexible working, remote working AI, all the rest of it. No longer do we need to value this presenteeism in the office where you have to show up at your desk from 9 in the morning till 9pm at night. What's the point? What is the point?

And so I think for me, like personally, my leadership style has very much been cultivate that culture, take that time to hire. Well, in the first place, it's always Easier when somebody's new, you know, casting that original dream team. It's like that saying, higher slow, fire fast.

So take your time to get that fit right in the beginning if you can. But then it's those, those goals, those motivations, how you're incentivizing to say, look, we can have fun along the way, but we all know what we're aiming towards. This is still a business, this isn't a playground.

We're still eyes on the prize, working towards the target. And look, if we have these low moments, then we've got a way to pick each other up and get through them together.

If there's a listener now thinking, I want more fun workplace, I want to create that. I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a CEO leader here, so what can I do tomorrow? So what should I do? Should I communicate to the team that now we're going to be a fun workplace? So what's the first step?

I love that everyone have fun. Everyone go and have fun. Are you having fun? Are you having fun? That's a great question. I, number one, it starts from the top. It starts with you as the leader. People pick up on each other's energies.

You know, I actually read yesterday that apparently there is this science. Again, I'm not going to go too woo woo, so stick with me here. But there is this science that we can pick up on each other's auras from like five feet away. And it's an energy that has been.

And so subconsciously, you know, when we think about people as these walking energetic fields, we do pick up, right? We can tell if someone is like motivating or draining or whatever. So the leader sets the culture from the get go. So it starts with you. And that isn't going to happen tomorrow.

But what you can do tomorrow or right now is pay attention and take those first steps to the awareness. How open, how light, how optimistic are you feeling? Obviously business is hard. Obviously the world is going through a shit storm at the moment. But how is that going to help you?

Like an instant reframe that as like it always helps me when I'm finding myself getting into a more negative headspace and I'm spiraling in the moment. My instant reframe is how does this serve me? And it's just that question that for me really works.

I'm like, okay, it's kind of like your thing of like, so what are we going to do about it? How is that going to help? Right, so that's the first thing I think then trickling it down to the team. As I already mentioned, you've got the hiring process.

So I think part of that is being clear about your values. And obviously we're not talking about these word art quote graphics on posters around the office.

We're talking about the actual core values that your organized organization lives and breathes and actually, you know, accurately reflects the company culture that you want to be building.

And test on that, test on those values, look at past behaviors, look at how your interviewee has handled situations. You know, always look to past evidence as opposed to future hypothesis hypotheticals. And then, you know, for. To each their own. Whether it's.

You know, some organizations, they make sure that they've always got a quarterly team team building exercise. I know another boss who does weekly one on ones with their team. But it's nothing to do with work. It's just checking in with them and seeing how they're doing.

These virtual games we will have to play during COVID So to each their own, you know, you can have fun and get creative with it.

Yeah, yeah. And while I'm listening to you, I see my thinking as well, that it shares the burden. So if you kind of learn to share the fun together, so then the burden is not on you only so you can share those as well. The difficult moments are easier to deal with the people that you have fun with.

Right. So I think it's kind of building the rapport there and the kind of a general feeling that we are doing this together.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I love that as like spot on.

Yeah. But is that like if you now again look at the kind of the hundreds of entrepreneurs who've been helping. So. So how big of a problem is that they're not having fun?

How big of a problem? I think for the entrepreneur, especially the most driven, determined, tenacious, persistent of entrepreneurs, I don't think they need it as much. It's more been an observation.

That's a really kind of fun alternative strategy to build your resilience is to just have fun while you're going at it. I think when you. It honestly does become more problematic is the wider team. It is the team culture. Right. Because at the end of the day, it's your business, it's your baby.

You set it up for a reason. You know what you're working towards. And if there's an exit or similar at the end of the rainbow, then you know, you've got that intrinsic motivation. But for your team.

And I think now, especially with the labor market and how much all the cards have Been thrown up in the air. I. I do think it's become a lot more important these days.

Yeah. How much? Like, I mean now in the 2020, the. The decade has been kind of with COVID to. To AI to wars and others. So. So yeah, this now even changing more nowadays compared to previous decades or 100.

Exactly. You know, and I speak about this as well. Right. Because it is the past decade that the majority of my learnings have come from. But that this isn't just any random decade. It's exactly before. It's like a decade with a global pandemic with geopolitical tensions with AI. Exactly.

As you mentioned. So yeah, these are very interesting times.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. But then if we kind of go back to the kind of the desperation and so, so. And even the resilience. So, so take us to step, step by step. So you feel desperate now. You, you see nothing out of there.

So should you try to work or should you be coach or like what's your advice when you do coaching as well to kind of these entrepreneurs and leaders there that. Okay, is there kind of.

That you kind of get experience and then you learn how to deal with it or what's your advice for them to kind of overcome that?

I love that we're double clicking into this topic and as like, I feel like this is so underserved. I feel like no one is talking about this. So this is really interesting. So thank you for giving me the chance to kind of talk about it.

Fundamentally, it's about power dynamics and people are just allergic to desperation. Desperation just implicitly communicates to people that you need something, you want something.

And especially if we put this in kind of business development, right, like B2B sales, it's also not only implying that, that, that you want something, but it's also implying to your prospective buyer that there's a reason that you're in this desperate situation.

And so you may not be saying anything. It may not even be the truth. It might just be this energy that you're kind of giving off. But what you're saying, someone is not only giving off this kind of repellent energy, but it's also. Maybe they don't even realize it. Right.

But a bit further beneath the surface, it's is if, if they were that good, why would they be chasing me? If they were in demand, wouldn't they be busy enough doing all this other work and doing this, that and the other.

So it's more of this kind of repelling energy that we could all we've all been there. We can all fall victim to it. I definitely have as well. And so no one likes it. So we do have to make this conscious effort to override it. So for me, I will still.

You can still have the truth of the feelings inside of you and it can still be the reality of the situation. But I think this is actually where my performing background comes into play. I wanted to be an actress when I was younger, and it's playing a bit of a role. It's playing a bit of a character.

And this is again, what you can be playful with and have fun with. So knowing that it's a repellent, ineffective strategy, do the opposite.

Like, you need to kind of change tack and give off this energy that actually you're not as desperate as you maybe really are, that you are in demand, that you do have all this exciting work. And it is. It then becomes more attractive for people if somebody is busy working on something interesting.

It's almost like if you go to a party or a networking event and there's one person that's like surrounded by people and they're chatting and they're laughing and then you've got another person that's on their own and they're trying to make eye contact and trying to catch your attention, which of those two people are you going to want to go over and talk to?

Right. And so it's that. And so it's kind of using that party analogy. It's like, okay, how do we shift from being the person on their own trying to make eye contact versus the person who's surrounded by everyone and got them laughing?

And I think there is a little bit of fake it till you make it in that it's shifting energy, just doing that internally, getting into this kind of character, if you like. And you will start to kind of magnetize and attract and then. And then build from there.

I know it's easier said than done, but I guarantee the former is going to get you nowhere.

Yeah, yeah. I was trying to come up with a concept. I wrote an article on a Forbes.com as a business council member. So I was calling it mental intelligence to understand how to mentally tackle these moments when your thoughts are negative.

And because they are still thoughts, desperation is still a feeling, a thought in your head and how to kind of overcome that. So that's why I go for heavy training. I run stairs where I'm pushing and kind of learning how my mind starts to deal with the situation.

When it gets tough, I start feeling knee pain and feel Like I should stop. But then I'm asking it, is the pain really that hard at the moment that I should stop up and try to kind of get more comfortable in those kind of self doubts in those moments?

I know desperation still goes further, but just to kind of learn to deal with the moment and like you were saying, maybe acting kind of in a way to make it a fun game for yourself, that. Yeah, that's a thought. But I shouldn't look like a desperate person.

I should build it up in a way that I'm a good person. Right. And a fun to work with. So is that something that you're mentioning?

Yeah, yeah, no, just bouncing off your fitness example there, which I love is also I've had the pleasure of working, working and interviewing athletes turned entrepreneurs. Right. And the athletes like this as well, they are some of the best because they've pushed through.

They've got the mental fortitude as well as the physical resilience to keep going. So yeah, absolutely love that one as like.

Yeah, but is there something else in your opinion or what do they do differently? Like what could the others learn from them? So like now we haven't done that two decades of training hard, so can we learn that skill? Skill?

I think it's about, you know, picking and choosing what you pay attention to. It is absolutely mind blowing how much our own narratives, our own beliefs really do shape our own realities. And this is where it can really trick us because we think it's true.

We obviously believe it's true because our mind is telling us these things. But it is mind blowing a how much I see people get in their own way where these thoughts, beliefs, these patterns have come from. And I do pick up my private clients in the coaching sessions.

What I can pick up on is some of these throwaway comments that they make and I'm like, wait a minute, we need to rewind the way that they've kind of chosen to phrase certain things in the moment.

Whether it's, you know, I can't think of a specific example now, but they can be very insightful to the way that they think. And I'm like, wait, it's. And also it's kind of putting them up on like not everyone thinks this way like this.

Just because it's your truth and it's your normal doesn't mean that it objectively is the truth. It is genuinely the way that you've decided to perceive something. And that's definitely something that's come across with the most successful people that I've that I've worked with.

They curate their media consumption in the same way that they curate their actual consumption, you know, their media diet as well as their physical diet. So one particular example that comes to mind, mind they curate which podcast they listen to, what they, I mean they never watch tv.

The little time have on, on social media, they're only following certain accounts and they're just razor focused on where they need to get to.

And what I find so inspiring about these individuals is they are regaining that control, exercising that sense of total agency, choosing what they're feeding their bodies, what they're feeding their brains and having that level of self respect to say this, this, this and this is going to help me to where I need to go.

This, this and that is not going to help me. And it's almost like, you know, it sounds so simple saying it out loud. It sounds so. And I think that's another, that's another trait of some of the most, most successful people is they make it look easy because they're just like, why wouldn't you.

Why would I want to get in my way? So I think when that switch happens for some people is where everything can change.

But do you need kind of that switch or is it more like incremental that one by one you can tackle the obstacles and get better? Or is it more that you need that kind of lightning bolt moment that now I understand and change everything thing?

To each their own. You know, I've definitely seen both happen. I've definitely seen more of the gradual transformation. I mentor MBA students on an 18 month program in entrepreneurship and so I've been privileged to witness that evolution over the 18 month kind of program.

And then there's others where it has been more of this lightning bolt moment of just like flip a switch. What have I been doing? I know it's happened to me with a lot of things, a lot of things where I've just, just I just stop doing it. Where it's like, I don't need this anymore.

I'm either sick of it or I've woken up to how unhelpful this is. And for me it has been like flipping a switch, to be honest.

Yeah, yeah. Really, really great stuff there. Super powerful conversation. So were you lucky when you became like you are in top 20 in the business podcast and being named in the like a female entrepreneur and everything. So we're just luck lucky or how did you become like the person you.

Are today as like such a great question. And this is where it's such a treat to Be on the other side of the table and get to be interviewed as opposed to being the interviewer. This is actually the birthplace of hacking luck.

It was because 15 plus years ago, I left the desert island that I grew up on and I moved to London. I left my friends, my family, everyone that I knew, obviously. Granted, I was in my early 20s, so it wasn't, you know, that difficult, but I did, I upped and left.

I'm the only person from this, you know, community that did that. And I pulled myself up by my socks. I found somewhere cheap to live on the outskirts of London. I got a job. I got tons of rejection. You know, we're talking about the last decade and everything that's gone on.

When I started my career as Lack, this was towards the tail end of the biggest global financial crisis we've ever experienced in 08. So millennials are the most resilient breed ever, you know. And so I faced tons and tons and tons of rejection.

And what I thought would take me two weeks to land a job in London ended up taking me nine months. I was pulling beers in a pub. In the meantime, I was a barista making coffees. I was doing all these jobs just to kind of pay my rent.

And then eventually, nine months later, somebody gave me an opportunity. I got my foot in the door, I worked my way, I turned the milk into butter and, and build up from there. And it was around this time my friend started to see what I was doing.

Social media was kind of coming about and one of my friends said to me, steph, you're so lucky. And obviously. And this. I mean, what year? I mean, honest, I'm. I'm gonna say this was like, honestly, 2011, I want to say I'm pretty sure this was 2011. So this is literally 15 years ago, right?

So 15 years ago. And I still remember her saying it to me. And of course, it evokes such a reaction in me, which was like, bit. I don't know if I can swear on this podcast, but, like, do you know what I've done to get here? Do you know what I've done? I've left every.

You're all still there on the island, which, you know, more power to them. They're living their best lives. I love it. But I upped and left. I left everything. I left my family, my friends, my lifestyle, everything behind as like, I knew nobody in London. Nobody, nobody, nobody. I had no friends.

I didn't go to university here. I didn't have relatives in London. I didn't Know anyone? No one. And from scratch. And so this is where it's a real kind of full circle moment.

Now I am older, I think I've grown and matured a lot, hopefully in the past 15 years and hopefully much, much more to come in the next 15. But it has now, you know, in that moment, to my 22 year old self, I was so indignant at that comment and I, I was so annoyed and I was like, I'm not lucky.

I've worked hard for this, I've taken these risks, I've been resilient, I've been to every single job interview going, I've applied to all these different job applications. It's taken me nine months to finally get a proper job. I've been pulling pints and making coffees all this time.

So of course I was, I was outraged by that comment. But of course now, 15 years later, I do realize, of course luck had a part to play in this, but this is where the plot twist comes in. Hacking luck. I hacked it. You hack?

Hacking is making a system work in the way that it is not intentionally designed system. I hacked luck. I stacked the odds in my favor. I had no university degree, I had no connections, I had no work experience, I had no money.

Like I had nothing on paper going in my favorite favor and yet I've made it work. And here I am 15 years later, living in central London. I'm super happy. I'm not going to humble, brag and say everything that I've got and everything now, but I've come a long way since then through hacking luck.

But what kept you going? Why did you make it? There are a lot of people who wish to get there but didn't get there. So why, why you?

There are things that I would say again, are definitely inside and outside of my control. I'm going to start with the ones that are not. You know, I'm aware that privilege is blind to those who have it.

And so as much as I said before, okay, I have no university degree, I have no money, I have no connections, no work experience. I'm a fresh 22 year old coming into this new city. But what would be remiss of me to not also mention is English is my first language.

I am technically technologically literate. Like I know how to operate. You know, I have a certain skill set. And whether it's nature, nature, there's obviously some energy within me that kind of creates that kind of get up and go, right.

And so I appreciate that not everyone can just come to London, find somewhere to rent, get these jobs. But it goes back to, so what are you going to do about it? So how is that helpful? What, what are you going to do?

You need to go back to that sense of self agency and say, okay, what is in real control and what can you do about it?

Yeah, but I love that like kind of how you pick up those signs that were your advantage you see in that moment. So, so I, I listened to one speech by Arnold Schwarzenegger. So he was saying that when he wanted to be the movie, so he visioned that he would be a movie star.

And then all the kind of the other actors were from, from USA or somewhere, they had English. But then he said, actually his accent is the strength, he will stand out. So then he used that and that became his strength.

For some others it might felt like it's not a strength at all, it's a disadvantage. But like you were saying, you picked up those things. So that's what I love, that you kind of picked up the things that were your strengths there. Somebody, many others have those, but they don't see it the same way.

And if you don't have exactly those, you can still make. Right? Yeah.

Oh, I love so much that you've brought Arnold Schwarzenegger into the conversation because love him. Such an inspiration. Have you read his latest book, is it Seven Rules for Life or something?

Yeah, I've been listening to him a lot. Yes, yes.

There's. There's a, there's a line in that book where he talks exactly that about coming to America and how much the accent got in his way. And he describes how much money he paid a dialect coach to help get rid of the accent. And he's really funny because in brackets he puts like.

I know I should ask for a fun.

Yeah, but he is such a great guy. I mean, and what he has accomplished and putting it simple, that you just have to work harder than others or sometimes. But then you, you will find your strengths there and advantages that you can then take forward.

So it's not like that he didn't have victimized mindset at all or victimized.

Exactly. And you know what? I would love to also just mention here really briefly, the gender piece as well, because this is something that comes up a lot.

I remember I was at an event when once and it was a panel discussion and I was part of the audience and it came to the Q and A section at the end and this woman at the back of the audience, she stood up, put her hand up immediately when she started speaking, you can tell she's already kind of got a bit of this victim mindset.

And she starts talking about how she's the only woman in the room, how she's the only woman in the company, this, that and the other. And there is, I'm sure there is validation in there.

And I don't want to completely do this a disservice, but in my instance, I've always operated in male dominated industries because let's face it, there's only two that aren't male dominated.

And to your Arnold Schwarzenegger accent example, it's like, can you use that to your advantage in the sense that, yeah, you're the only woman in the room, which means can you stand out? Can you be more memorable?

And I think it goes back to, you know, I'm skating on thin ice here because I do genuinely recognize how the patriarchal systems do work against us. That is, that is true. But it goes back to, on an individual level, how are you helping yourself? This, this.

I do believe in the systems, the old boys club. I get, I do get it. And I do also genuinely believe that if my name was Stefan instead of Stephanie, I'd be 10, 10 times more successful. But that narrative isn't helpful to me.

So which narrative are you choosing that's going to help you get to where you need to go?

Yeah, totally agree. I'm a son of an immigrant, so born and raised in Finland, so. But there are some advantages of it as well. So, so, so then I use those.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah. I could talk with you for ages. I'm learning so much, having so much fun. But unfortunately we have to, to end the episode soon. But it's been super great conversation and I mean, lot to learn here.

But I know that there are many people who want to find out more of your thinking and your podcast and others. So how can people connect with you and find more information about you?

Yeah, I would absolutely love to hear from your lovely listeners. Thankfully, there is only one Stephanie Melodia in the world, which also makes it easy to find me. So, Stephanie with a phone. Melodea. It's like the word melody, but I a. At the end of which I'm not a musician.

I know I should have been, but find me on Instagram. LinkedIn are my main channels. I am also publishing on Substack under Hacking Luck and of course the podcast that you mentioned as well. So, yeah, I'd love to hear from people.

Yeah, I'll put those on the show notes so that it's easy to find. But thank you so much. It's been an honour and so fun to have a conversation with you.

Stephanie, likewise as like the time has absolutely flown. You're an incredible host. So thank you so much for having me me.

Thank you so much for joining here and for those listening. So I think there was something a lot to reflect on. So thank you for tuning in. And remember that it's about you to create the opportunities that you can create for your life.

And as always, so take a stance, bow, and keep unlocking The Black Belt in Leadership within you.