In this episode, Anna Lundberg sits down with entrepreneur, strategist, and podcast host Stephanie Melodia. Stephanie shares her unconventional career journey from art school to building a successful business, discusses how she’s rethinking success at a pivotal life stage, and unpacks the power and pitfalls of metrics, personal branding, and living a “multi-hyphenate” career. Tune in for candid insights on balancing ambition with gratitude, redefining what success truly means, and practical strategies to create a work-life blend on your own terms.

Key moments:

[00:00] Introduction to Stephanie and her background

[00:38] From art school to London: Stephanie’s early career

[03:56] Climbing the ladder, launching her business, and reimagining success

[09:02] Why values matter more than ever in a changing job landscape

[11:44] Why we need to temper both our highs and lows

[15:47] Social media metrics, vanity stats, and the reality of influence

[20:37]Stephanie’s “multi-hyphenate” career: consulting, mentoring, speaking, podcasting

[29:57] Reflecting on gratitude, ambition, and staying “hungry yet full”

[36:41] Realities and logistics of designing your ideal workday

Resources mentioned:

• Stephanie Melodia’s Podcast: Strategy & Tragedy
• The Business Accelerator Programme: OneStepOutside.com/accelerate.
• Connect with Anna Lundberg: Get in touch on Instagram or LinkedIn.

Redefining Success as an Entrepreneur

This episode is for you if you’re navigating a new season in your career or business – and wondering what success looks like now. My guest shares her refreshingly honest take on ambition, personal growth, and building a life that balances freedom with fulfilment. From bootstrapping a marketing agency to becoming a multi-hyphenate speaker, mentor, and podcaster, she reflects on what it really means to “stay hungry yet full” — and why reimagining success isn’t a one-time decision, but an ongoing evolution.

Welcome to Reimagining Success, the podcast that helps you build a profitable business as an independent expert, one that works for you and your lifestyle. I’m your host, Anna Lundberg, former corporate insider turned business mentor, executive coach, and mum of two. Whether you’re a solopreneur, a coach, speaker, consultant, I’m here to guide you in creating a business that gives you freedom, flexibility and the fulfilment you’re looking for, ready to redefine success and build a business that you love. Let’s get started.

Anna Lundberg:
Hello everybody and welcome to this month’s interview on the Reimagining Success podcast. And I’m here with Stephanie Melodia and she is another one, and I’m sorry to say another one Stephanie, but another one of our mic Dropper community which I’m really thrilled about. In fact, I’ve had Alex on as well and because it’s just as I was commenting with someone the other day, such an amazing curated community. I’m so impressed with the members in there, including you, Stephanie. So I’m really excited to, to dig into what you do and you know, what your practise looks like, I suppose. So I would love for you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are and, and what your background is.

Stephanie Melodia:
Yeah, absolutely. So I focus on entrepreneurship, so helping people start their business, scale their business and I do it in a number of ways, either direct one to one consulting with a handful of growth oriented clients, mentoring MBA students in entrepreneurship with the edtech scale up. One day I travel the world like you and our other mic droppers, delivering talks, which is amazing. And I’m also the host of Top 20 Business Show Strategy and Tragedy. But cue that one up after you listen to this show first.

Anna Lundberg:
But I love it so much and so many parallels and I’m sure differences as well. How did you get started? Where did you begin your career?

Stephanie Melodia:
Oh, are we going all the way back to the beginning of my career? Okay. It’s really interesting because I actually studied illustration, I specialised in illustration art school. And my rationale at 18 years old was simply how cool would it be if I just could get paid to sit around and draw all day. And I think the naivety of youth is, you know, down to not really having like these adult role models around me with like other career options to explore. So it was very much what are my natural strengths? What are my passions? And it had always been artistic, it always been something creative. So that was my logic back then. Specialised in art school and then came to London, so actually grew up abroad and came to London like early 20s and I just needed to get my foot in the door in the creative industries and, and somebody amazing gave me the opportunity. I remember as an admin assistant on 15k a year when I was 22 years old and I would bring in my portfolio every single day and I would stick it under their nose and I’d be like, look at my, look at what I can create.

Stephanie Melodia:
And I kind of remember my boss at the time sort of metaphorically like patting me on my head and kind of being like, yeah, okay, like, okay, like we’ve seen it, we’ll bear it in mind. And then what happened was, is that my career path almost diverged and during the day job it opened my eyes to this whole other world that I had no idea about. So I grew up on a desert island, as I mentioned. I wasn’t surrounded by these like amazing professional adults. So just that complete naivety. So moving to London, starting my career properly, getting my foot in the door on the creative industries, I just saw the world of brands and marketing and advertising. I just had no clue. I just completely, completely naive to it all.

Stephanie Melodia:
So I was just, I could not have been hungrier. I was in the office by like 7am and I am not a morning person whatsoever. I would be leaving by 7pm and you know, all the anti burnout, anti hustle culture are gonna come and hang me for this. But I just was so energised and so hungry and again, being fresh in London as well. Like, I didn’t really have any, anything tethering me. I didn’t have a partner, I didn’t have a social circle. So it was just like I could, I could throw myself into it. But I think what to speed things up because obviously that was quite a long time ago.

Stephanie Melodia:
What I’d love to do at this point in the story is kind of connect it to the great theme of your everything that you’re about, Anna, which I absolutely love. So I’m really looking forward to diving deeper into this whole theme of reimagining success. But what I’ll just say is to speed up that story is that at age 22, I succeeded in moving to the best place in the world, London, in my opinion. A year later, I got promoted. A few years later I joined a larger company, worked my way up the career ladder and then started my own company in 2017. And now something I wanted to say here on this podcast with you, Anna, is now that I’m on the other side of all that success and everything that my younger self dreamed of, having a partner house this career, running my own business, etc. Etc. I am at this point very honestly left wondering how I go about redefining what success means to me.

Stephanie Melodia:
So that’s why I’m so excited to be here with you, Anna, and get stuck into that properly.

Anna Lundberg:
Oh, amazing. So you’re at the pivotal moment. This is great. So we can witness how it evolves firsthand live on the show. Love this. This is going to be a first But I think, I mean, going back to the beginning and not, as you said, that we could go down lots of different paths there. But I think it’s interesting, as you said, the naivety that we have coming out of school and university and whatever we’re doing, the simplicity in which we think about when we’re really little, I’m going to be a firefighter or a vet. And of course, especially in the age of AI and how things are shifting now there, there’s just so many nuances and jobs that haven’t been invented, jobs that are going to be taken away, evolved, et cetera, that it just boggles their mind.

Anna Lundberg:
And the things that all of us do today, we wouldn’t even have known. I mean, obviously podcasts weren’t a thing, you know, 20, 30 years ago. It just wasn’t a possibility. So it’s just always interesting. I always think, what advice would I have given myself and what advice can we give young people? And it’s tricky because it really is to kind of go with your curiosity and try to diversify and learn things and find out what makes you tick. And so they’re not necessarily planned for one role. And especially in the creative world, it’s great that you’re able to follow that and have that naivety, because otherwise so many people are actually kept back from following those paths because we’re just put off by, oh, you’ll never make money that way. And it’s the creative beast or famine kind of thing.

Anna Lundberg:
You’re just going to be a struggling artist. And it’s, you know, it’s really powerful when you can overcome those mindset blocks and actually go for it anyway.

Stephanie Melodia:
Yeah, absolutely. And what I was just going to say on that is you don’t know what you don’t know. And something I talk. What I found myself talking about a lot, especially mentoring early stage entrepreneurs or budding founders who are thinking of setting up their own business. They’ve got a bit of an itch to scratch, but there are these blockers in the way, which happens maybe more often than you’d think, is I find myself talking about the concept of Schrodinger’s Box, or, sorry, Schrodinger’s cat. So if anyone hasn’t really heard, like, Schrodinger was this German philosopher and he had a cat, like, literally a pet cat. And there was this experiment that he did where he put his cat in a box. And apologies to any, like, pet lovers here, but the idea is, is that while the cat was in the box, it was both simultaneously dead and alive and you and like both of those realities coexist until you lift the lid and you open that box.

Stephanie Melodia:
So that really rings true here. Whether it’s forging your path in your career, whether it’s making that leap into entrepreneurship again, more my domain now it’s you just don’t know what you don’t know and you miss 100 of the shots you don’t take. That being said, obviously, you know these black and onliners are great as Instagram quotes, but what’s missing is the nuance. And the balance was saying to your point is like, yeah, there are some careers that you, you may end up being a starving artist, to use your example. There’s others where you can be more strategic. So there is a balancing act to do with that. And what I would say is given the rapidly evolving landscape of job roles, I mean, even on another podcast I was listening to the other day, somebody blew my mind sharing that studying software engineering is no longer the safe bet that it used to be. And I always kicked myself.

Stephanie Melodia:
I was like, oh, if only I was like that, interested in tech and if only I’d studied software engineering, like I’d be in such high demand and especially as a woman as well, like being a coder or developer. But now, of course, to your point, with the advent of AI, it’s blowing my mind that even software developers are no longer safe. So what came to mind on that, on that note as well, just quickly there, Anna was, I think it’s again the same with entrepreneurship is being, being flexible on that goal, being open enough to redefine success. The more information that you gather because you’re placing too much importance on your previous self as well. You didn’t have the information, the knowledge. I was saying with the naivety of youth, you’re gathering information along the way. It’s totally fine. If anything, it’s very encouraged to change your mind if you found out new information that you didn’t have before.

Stephanie Melodia:
But I think the anchor to help guide you through that process is your values. And I think like big terms like mission, purpose that are often used in that sort of saying. They’re really big word, they’re really hard to discover. It’s really hard when you ask someone like, what’s your purpose? I don’t know. I think a lot of people would be like, oh, I’m still figuring out. I’m just trying to get through life, you know, so if something like purpose or mission is just too big of a word for you, Right now then that’s why I say kind of values or I guess it’s usually swapped out for like passion, like what do you care about? What’s important to you? And then there’s so much flexibility in how those core values can manifest in your professional life.

Anna Lundberg:
And it can feel so intimidating and overwhelming to come up with the one calling of your life and the passion is the one. Right. But I think the two words I heard you say which are really key are nuance and balance. Because also we, we tend to think in very black or white thinking. I’m either over here in a soul destroying corporate job where I’m earning lots of money or I’m the struggling artist, or I’m either in a full time job or I’m completely self employed, flying free with no stability. And we just have those either or, or either I don’t know what I’m doing or I have this one amazing passion and purpose and every full of joy and fulfilment. And the reality is, you know, it’s little shifts and tweaks, right?

Stephanie Melodia:
Yeah. And just jumping off from that black and white, the yin yang, those two polar opposites. Something I’ve been thinking about and especially this morning, looking forward to the interview with you Anna, was where there’s so much talk of embracing failure and failing is a good thing, fail fast. And again, especially in entrepreneurial circles, and again, easier said than done. And what I’ve loved with having this opportunity of sitting with you on this theme is hang on a minute, we’re talking so much about failure is a good thing, fail fast, embrace failure. We’re not talking enough about the reimagining success on that other side. And so if we’re meant to treat failure in a more positive light, then I would argue we need to downplay the success piece as well. And so this was an opportunity to bring this and like air some of this thinking with you on your show here is instead of viewing to your point on these two polar opposites, the black and white, instead of viewing this like success as this pinnacle where once achieved all our problems are solved.

Stephanie Melodia:
I think as long as we have that mentality, we’re going to have that same black and white view with failure. And so if we need to get more comfortable with failure, we need to downplay success.

Anna Lundberg:
I love that you say that and it sounds a bit sort of depressing, but it’s something I say to the members in my business accelerator all the time. We had a call last Thursday, we said exactly that, that actually the Roller coaster is a roller coaster because we’re so. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. I’m talking to Stephanie. I love my life, the sun is shining, I’m successful. Oh, and then the next day it’s like, oh, nobody wants me. You know, someone said, no, I only got 20 people on my web and whatever it is, and we somehow need to, and it sounds a bit bland, but we need to kind of flatten out both the highs and the lows. Because if we allow ourselves to feel the high so viscerally, I suppose, and we’re also going to feel the low.

Anna Lundberg:
So we need to have like our own core identity and meaningful definition of success that is independent of how many people come to our webinar, however many people buy the thing, whatever.

Stephanie Melodia:
Right, yeah, exactly. And I get your point. It’s like, you know, it’s not that toxic positivity that we’re spewing. It’s like. And I get the argument for like, life is short. Feel your feelings, embrace the highs and the lows and everything else. But I do think if you are, if you do feel those feelings quite intensely, as I do believe that I do personally, then yeah, you need to kind of temper that excitement in the same way you need to not let yourself get dragged down into the negativity when that happens as well. What you’ve actually just reminded me of is my childhood ambition since for as long as I can remember, like literally three years old, I wanted to be an actress.

Stephanie Melodia:
So no surprise. Okay, that makes sense. No surprise. We’re both public speakers in the mic drop community, so it all makes sense. But what you just reminded me of is I used to have this quote on my wall from Drama School, which was so funny talking about this now because I was literally like 12 or 13 when I had this on my bedroom wall. It said, enjoy the applause but don’t fully believe it. And that’s the same here. So we’re not like, we’re not being depressing or saying you need to shave off your emotions or like lobotomizers just to protect yourself from the lows.

Stephanie Melodia:
But it’s just, as I said, it’s just tempering that excitement when something great happens. In the same way that you don’t get lost in, in a downward spiral when something less than positive happens.

Anna Lundberg:
And also that acting link and apologies, I’ve only seen this film once, so I’m going to butcher it. But you know, in La La Land, Emma Stone’s character, she puts on a one woman show and it’s a failure, right? Hardly anyone. It’s hugely humiliating, it’s awful. And yet one person in the audience goes on and puts her forward, which then becomes her breakthrough role and she becomes huge successful and famous. Right? And I think that’s the nuance for all of these things. And we talk about it a lot, in fact, in the group on LinkedIn and so on, that we want the big numbers and the visibility and, and the virality and all this stuff. But actually, really what we want are the right people seeing the message, connecting with us and then that will lead to the commercial project, whether it’s a talk or a consulting engagement or coaching or whatever your business model happens to be. But it’s much more the quality of the individual connection than, oh, I need 10,000 people to see this post and then not do anything about it.

Stephanie Melodia:
It’s how much social media has conditioned us into those vanity metrics, into those. We were just chatting before we were recording this idea of connection over collection, where we take LinkedIn, for example. I’ve got 10,000 connections and the number one notification across the top of my menu whenever I log back into LinkedIn is on the request category. Not messages, not comments, nothing else. I just constantly get these requests. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but like wanting to come to collect, not connect. And so I love that Emma Stone La La Land analogy where exactly it’s like, you know, I’ve also seen something where they say, like, you know, on Instagram, if you’re real, got. If it only got 100 views and you’re like, wait a minute, do you know how big the room would have to be to fill up a hundred people?

Anna Lundberg:
Whereas me, I’ve only got 2,000 people who follow what I say. You know, it’s ridiculous. Into a massive auditorium, right? You’d be, wow, this is a lot of people listening to me.

Stephanie Melodia:
It’s totally desensitised that I’ve thought about this from before anywhere when it comes to money. But numbers in general, I think when you get beyond a certain point, we don’t like as, as humans, like, we legitimately don’t comprehend past a certain number. It just becomes like too big. So you’re kind of like, you’re just taking those numbers at face value because we are living in a world where the black and white numbers are constantly put in our face. So let me ask you, for example, does a day go by where you don’t have some sort of metric in your face?

Anna Lundberg:
Definitely in my face. I mean it’s impossible not to see the LinkedIn metrics. Right. Whether it’s we’re chatting about it in our WhatsApp group or you’re thinking, oh, I’ve only got 300 impressions on that post. Always got an eye on sort of commercially now my numbers in terms of sales because will be. I started. I’ve often been quite relaxed about it. There comes a point when you’ve built a house and you’ve got kids and you’ve got some slightly more comprehensive financial obligations and maybe also ambitions.

Anna Lundberg:
For me, actually, my kids are a little bit older now, so I’m beginning to go, oh, okay, what could it look like if I expanded? So, yes, it’s. It’s money, it’s views, it’s. Yeah. Things. Right.

Stephanie Melodia:
I think the distinction there is. I think it’s fantastic that you have that structure and the numbers and you’re tracking for the business. And I think like, if you’ve got certain goals you want to achieve, like absolutely brilliant. But I think in the context of social media and personal worth, self worth and how we’re reimagining success is like how many followers, how many or even if it’s more of a personal like health tracking thing or I mean, for me, for example, as soon as I wake up in the morning, before I’ve even fully opened my eyes, the first thing I do is switch off my alarm, which is a sleep app. It gives me the percentage of my sleep quality that night.

Anna Lundberg:
True. Didn’t even think of that one. Got that one too.

Stephanie Melodia:
An example where it’s like, okay, straight away and I love it. Otherwise I would have deleted the app. But it’s just my point with that is like straight away, before I’m even fully awake, there’s a number. And the point here is how desensitising it can be to just see these numbers on a screen as opposed to like we’re saying a room full of people.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah. Well, yeah, and there it, yeah, absolutely. There it is more thinking what it means. Right. But I think as you say in the personal life too because I think of, you know, the dreaded 10,000 steps and I always, for so long I rebelled against it but actually now I find it a really useful metric, especially working from home, I’ve got a walking pad. But if we do just distil everything meaningful in life to like one number, it becomes awful. Right. Robotic.

Anna Lundberg:
I mean not, not human at all. But it’s very wishy washy and vague to have goals which are more meaningful me meaningful for me now in terms of I want to be present with the kids, I want to feel balanced, I want to have freedom. Like what does that actually mean? Right. It’s hard to measure that apart from, you know what, right. I’m feeling good about what I’m doing, who I’m with, I’m happy to be here kind of thing. But you know, I think we, we somehow our programme, maybe from school education and so on to need those metrics. And certainly in a business company context, that’s what we’re always looking at. Right.

Anna Lundberg:
And that’s what people as you said, are talking about and going these seven figure business and eight figure and so on.

Stephanie Melodia:
And I don’t mean to be bashing on metrics, I think that they can be very motivational, they can give us that clarity that we need to know like how we are progressing. But I think the point is how number one desensitising it can be to see kind of larger numbers and then linked to that is if you are linking your self worth to some of those as well is where it just kind of opens up that slippery slope which you know, bring it back to the theme of reimagining success is the word of caution on that note.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah, no, I love that. And I’m still intrigued by what you said before about sort of rethinking what success looks like for you now. But I suppose what does it look like at the moment in terms of what is your business model? I know before we hit record you hinted at lots of different spinning plates and projects. So can you give us a bit of an, A sort of an overview of what you’re up to?

Stephanie Melodia:
Yeah, right now. Oh dear. A bit of an overview is a challenge. I’ll do my best, I guess. What’s your core business?

Anna Lundberg:
The purpose of the audience? It just always curious to know, you know, are you. We’ve talked about speaking, of course. Is that what you do? Do you do other Things as well. What does that look like from a sort of a bird’s eye view?

Stephanie Melodia:
So there’s a mixture of things which I am honestly loving. I am loving being a multi hyphenate, having multiple revenue streams, keeping busy, scratching my itch and kind of living some of my icky guy, which we can talk about in a minute as well. That Japanese concept as an overview. I am working with a select few growth clients, doing some strategy consulting work, given my experience in business and the amount of entrepreneurs that I’ve helped over the past 15 years. Plus at the moment the mentorship with the MBA programme I’m loving as well. And then the talks, to your point, and also the podcast, you know, I’m building that out as a media channel as well. So definitely on the hunt for brand sponsors. So in terms of what actually puts the bread on the table, so to speak, I guess it’s 4 of those income streams.

Stephanie Melodia:
So the day to day is the mentorship with the MBA programme, the talks, the consulting and then brand sponsorships for the podcast.

Anna Lundberg:
Nice. See that’s very clear and coherent. So thank you. Do you feel them all in parallel or did you start with one and have you layered on over the years?

Stephanie Melodia:
Yeah, grad. So basically like it doesn’t come as a surprise given my last business, which was running a marketing agency. So building that up, having a team, working with multiple clients, I mean obviously I kind of got that, built that from the ground up and so was very much a one woman agency in the early days before I could start to bring in the team and stuff. So it’s no surprise that I’m now kind of going back into that multi hyphenate kind of plate spinning with all these different hats in terms of like layering on. So what happened was I ended the chapter with the agency summer before last, kicked off with the podcast. That was something that I had just been sat on for such a long time. I was desperate to do it. I had so much great advice from people I really admired and valued telling me not to do it.

Stephanie Melodia:
So it was very much delayed. It was something I really wanted to do, had to wait until the time was right, so to speak, for doing that. So I launched the podcast September 2023. And then, and then some of. And then the MBA thing came shortly afterwards and then the consulting has happened quite organically. So some of the clients and the network from my last agency have come back to me and. And then, yeah, and then the public speak. I mean that was also kind of a result of My agency as well, because I started doing more and more of that as a marketing channel for the business until rediscovering my childhood ambition, which I mentioned before, of wanting to be an actress, before getting such great feedback and before reminding myself of that wonderful feeling and that adrenaline and the rush and everything when you do get off stage.

Stephanie Melodia:
And it was thanks to this amazing business coach that I was working with at the time, who, as silly as it sounds like, she gave me permission to lean even further into it. She was like, look, this is clearly a natural strength of yours. You clearly enjoy drives that revenue. It’s only good staff. So, like, yeah, you have my permission to, like, do more of this if you can. And so I’m kind of. That was what I was doing before, and now I’m kind of doing the same, but with an agency. So I think that’s where I almost feel it’s a blessing and a curse because I don’t feel as anchored and kind of focused on.

Stephanie Melodia:
I’m here to promote my business. I have something to sell. So there is this wonderful creative freedom of getting to talk about what I feel passionately about, getting to help other people with different things. But it does mean I have felt a little bit rudderless at times as well, so. But on the whole, I’m loving it, to be honest. Anna.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah. Oh, that’s good to hear. And we’ve got very parallel experiences from the acting. I come from marketing background, too, so it’s interesting how these red threads are spun through journeys. Yeah. So I guess it sounds like obviously the speaking and you get podcasts and so on, but in terms of building your personal brand and visibility, how are you approaching that? How are you getting your name out there? And as people always want to know, how do you get clients?

Stephanie Melodia:
Yeah, fantastic question, because honestly, proof is in the pudding with that one with my last company. So that, again, happy accident. And that was, you know, an accidental outcome from, again, this last business that I had. So building my company from the ground up, completely bootstrapped, no external investment whatsoever. And honestly, just being a bit stingy myself anyway, I just. I wanted to hustle in any way that was just cheap or free, basically. So whether that was attending events, doing some networking, cold calling, cold outreach, and then this personal brand piece, which wasn’t. I don’t even think that term was really that, like, common years ago when I first started the company.

Stephanie Melodia:
But I was always just really into social media anyway, just, you know, personally and professionally. Obviously we’ve both got the marketing background and I just found through consistently posting on LinkedIn in particular, in the B2B sense, it just kind of. It grew from there. So it was a happy accident. And. And then it was one day, I. Similar to what you were saying before, like, okay, actually, you know, learning these new things and putting more structure and tracking in place. I was tracking our attribution and I got into more of a structured rhythm of like, how many monthly inbound leads have we had, where have they come from, what’s the conversion rate, what’s the most common services that they’re requesting, etc.

Stephanie Melodia:
Etc. And what I realised at one point in the business was there was this interesting 8020 split between inbound inquiries via the website, the 80% and then 20 through referrals. And then interestingly, the 80 20, very roughly speaking, was the like inverse conversions, like, as you would expect, right? So the referrals drove more like a higher amount of conversions and obviously got more crap, like through the website. But what I found was, so those at one point in the business were the top two channels was like SEO, like inbound web traffic and referrals. And then digging more into the website and actually, and even that, honestly, Anna, that was an accident as well. Like, I accidentally discovered that if you searched something along the lines of startup marketing agency, we would be like right at the top of the first page, which was amazing. And I remember when I first discovered it and I wasn’t sure if it was like my cookies, my tracking. So I got the team and we had freelancers in other countries and stuff as well.

Stephanie Melodia:
I was like, can you just like search like what comes up your end? And they all sent screenshots and lo and behold, it was. So that was like a really amazing high moment. So digging further into this SEO, which again, I was like, didn’t even realise, like, I wouldn’t class myself an SEO specialist. But again, similar to the social media thing, we’re just regularly updating the website, adding blog posts, adding case studies, and so that regular refreshment of content really helps drive that. Anyway, my point, with all this linking it back into the personal brand, power is digging further in. I then looked at people’s search terms and how they were finding us. And the top search turn. My business was called Bloom, as in like flowers that Bloom or Orlando Bloom, take your pick, was Bloom Stephanie Melodia.

Stephanie Melodia:
So it was my company name or marketing or Bloom Agency. So it’s like the company name, maybe another keyword and then my name. So I was like, oh. So like that was Such a validating factor really show I was like, oh, okay. As much as I’m building my personal brand, I’m taking my business up there with me. So yeah, definitely work for me, honestly.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah. Hopefully inspiring to people to see as even if we want to sort of hide behind the business name or if we have a big organisation that that personal brand, it’s everything we always say people buy from people and especially in today’s market.

Stephanie Melodia:
Exactly, I suppose.

Anna Lundberg:
And I heard you say accidental a few times, which I find really interesting and I think there’s a balance of you’ve got to experiment. You just kind of have to go for this bias for action which is quite uncomfortable for those of us who again are sort of external validation, I want my ducks in a row and perfectionism, whatever else, we can break free of that. But there’s also a at which we go, okay, now we see what’s been working where I can lean into. You worked with a coach who said actually gave you permission to shift the business model in another direction. So I suppose thinking about how you’re intentionally crafting in the future, are there any changes you’d make or you know, what, what might you think looking ahead as you hinted at before, in terms of the next stage of success for you, what shifts might you make?

Stephanie Melodia:
Love that question, Anna. And if I may, I would love to tell you a little story from New Year’s Day this year. So 1st of January 2025, let’s go deep on this whole kind of success and what it means to us for a second. So I’m just going to check my notes on this because it’s a little story that I do want to share with your listeners. So basically 1st of January, New Year’s Day this year, I came to a very deep realised realisation. So I was left alone to my own devices. I hadn’t drunk too much the night before on New Year’s Eve partying, so I wasn’t like mega hungover or anything, but I was kind of like kind of tired, a bit restless. All my friends were either hungover or busy or whatever.

Stephanie Melodia:
So I was, I was really bored and that’s a great place to be actually. And that’s something that we don’t have enough of with again social media and these distractions is like you, you really need to put yourself in situations where you’re bored. You need to, you don’t bored it off, you need to like, yeah, you need to like cut off your friends for like a few hours and like put your phone Away or, you know, and. And embrace. Embrace a bit of that discomfort. So that was kind of the context, that was sort of how I was feeling like New Year’s Day. And given it was New Year’s Day and I’d done so much around, like goal setting and strategy, and I really buy into all of that stuff. I love.

Stephanie Melodia:
I’ve read like every self improvement book going, like, I, I personally love all that stuff. And I’d heard about this exercise, which I’d never done before, which was writing a. To your future self in the present or past tense. Obviously a bit of a brain hack there, as if it’s like already happened. And then crucially attaching an emotion to it as well, which is really powerful. So I get the psychology behind that as well. So it’s actually surprising. I’d never done this before, but I was like, again, bored.

Stephanie Melodia:
None of my friends were around, I had nothing to do. So it was like, okay, cool. I may as well found a nice bit of stationary, found a pen, went down, went to my desk. And the benefit of putting pen to paper just for somebody like me, at least that just goes a million miles an hour, is it forces you to slow down because you can’t write as fast as you think, or like, I type much faster, so it forced you to slow down. And given I’d already done all of this sort of goal setting and vision boarding and stuff in the weeks kind of leading up to 2025, I thought, thought, actually, I’m not gonna do this exercise. I’m not gonna do the usual of like, oh, these are all the things I could do because A, it’s just easy and I’ve kind of really done it with all this other stuff. But B, is that actually what I need? And it was just kind of like this moment where the penny dropped. I was on my own, just had this, like, epiphany.

Stephanie Melodia:
Stephanie had an epiphany. And what happened was I discovered the real challenge, which was how do I actually. Because like, these goals, now I’m going to achieve them, that comes fairly easily to me. So it’s fine. But I was like, actually the challenge is how do I combine my ambition with gratitude? How do I crack the whip and yet appreciate how far I’ve come without getting complacent? And ultimately, again, through writing and writing and pages and pages and back and back and front. What I then wrote was, how do I stay hungry yet full at the same time?

Anna Lundberg:
Oh, I love that.

Stephanie Melodia:
Thank you. I like what I. I like seeing those words Come out the pen after I wrote them as well. It’s like, ah, nailed it. That’s what it is. So that is maybe a more kind of, of deeper, reflective, slightly more philosophical answer than you were perhaps expecting to that answer. But that’s where I currently am and it goes back to what I was saying at the start around. I’ve moved to London, I’ve had this amazing creative career that’s taken me to all these amazing parts of the world and worked with some of the most, the world’s most famous household brand names.

Stephanie Melodia:
I’ve been in house and agency side. I’ve got the partner of my dreams, I’ve got, got property, I’m in the best city in the world. I then ran my own business and it was kind of like all of these goals that I’d envisioned for myself when I was younger. I definitely don’t want to say like I’ve done everything, I’ve achieved it, but it was like I am feeling on the other side of all that air quotes success. And so now this is my challenge. My challenge is now how do I reignite that fire, that flame, like nurture that ambition, but not fall in to that same trap that I have before of just of still not being happy with it. Because there’s always something else, there’s always another thing. So it’s really practising gratitude.

Stephanie Melodia:
I need to get back into my gratitude journaling now. So thank you for this because that’s prompted it too. But I think like really recognising how far you’ve come, feeling grateful, all of this great positive stuff, but then balancing it with the life more. So that’s my challenge. I don’t fully have the answers for it just yet, but how do I stay hungry yet full at the same time?

Anna Lundberg:
Oh my goodness, I love it. This is, we’ll go up, go up on the whiteboard kind of stuff, right? It’s. Let’s definitely continue this conversation offline because I think there’s so much in there and again, it’s the tension, it’s the nuance, it’s like, yes, I’m happy and, and it’s not either this or that performance and wellbeing, it’s, you know, this and that and I think that’s sort of the abundance mindset, but also as you say, gratitude. There’s so many things in there. And what’s interesting I find is, you know, when I started this podcast and when I wrote my first book and it was about leaving my corporate marketing job to start a business and that’s one pivotal moment, but it’s only one of many. Right. There’s also the, you know, I have now the successful business, now what’s next? And, and still it’s not to say you’re not happy with what you built, but there’s something else to be done. Just like you and I just recognising that, that’s just life, isn’t it? We, we get older, we evolve, our partners happen, come and go maybe, and children and whatever it is and whatever your family looks like and your ambitions, but that evolves and that’s okay.

Anna Lundberg:
And it’s exciting. It doesn’t mean that you’re, you know, spitting on the past, stuff that you’ve created, but it’s just also bringing that with you into the future. Can I ask you a really practical question, which is what, what does all this look like as a day to day the dream partner, the life in London, travelling world paint us the picture of the reality of kind of what your work life integration looks like from.

Stephanie Melodia:
A day to day perspective at the moment.

Anna Lundberg:
Yes. And we can also talk about the dream from there, but it sounds like you’re living a pretty good version of it at the moment, so.

Stephanie Melodia:
Well, I was gonna say, Anna, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty nice. It’s pretty nice at the moment. I, I mean prior to this interview with you, I mean let’s, let’s take today as a really perfect example, and it’s a really good example actually of a lot of my days, which I’m so happy for. So thank you for making me feel grateful actually. So first of all, kicking it off, off with an amazing. This is going to blow your mind listeners. Like pay attention. This international Women’s Day breakfast networking event at the actual mansion house which I learned is where the lord and lady mayor live.

Stephanie Melodia:
Actually live.

Anna Lundberg:
One way to start your day if.

Stephanie Melodia:
You have to do it was amazing. I’d never been in there before and I’ve lived in London for, you know, decade and a half roughly now. So this is that quote, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life. So true. So I’d never even been into this amazing venue. The lady mayoress greeted us and showed us where she lit. She pointed up and was like, that’s my apartment. So.

Stephanie Melodia:
And she literally said welcome to my gaff. Basically everyone laughed like this is so wild. Met some amazing women, had gorgeous barista style coffee, lovely catering by social pantry. Shout out to them because that was incredible. Had this gorgeous breakfast. Met these Amazing Women. Then sat down for a panel talk with the founder of Oaxaca, who I’m sure everyone’s heard of the restaurant chain, an interior designer. There are a few other amazing entrepreneurs can’t remember exactly right now.

Stephanie Melodia:
And last but not least, Holly Tucker, who was the co founder of not on the High street, who I’m sure.

Anna Lundberg:
Wow.

Stephanie Melodia:
Okay, she was amazing. So got to meet her, speak with her. Hopefully I can get her on my podcast as well. So exclusive scoop for your listeners maybe. And then from there cycled in the sunshine up to do a Pilates class. Genuine. So this is like pretty typical. Came home, cooked some amazing food, got myself ready for this interview with you.

Stephanie Melodia:
After this, I’ve got a load of other meetings and then maybe later on I will edit one of my podcast episodes, set up, do some top up of leads for an outreach campaign, have dinner with my partner and then have kind of a fairly similar day tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong, like, what I really don’t want to do is paint this like amazing rosy picture of like, oh, she gets to flit around and network and do Pilates. That is a lot of it and I love doing that. But for example, yesterday in contrast is more of my teacher day, so with the MBA students. So that is where I spent the majority of the day, just kind of sat at my desk. So it’s not always glamorous. I am kind of just sat here toiling away. But being really organised and systems and structures for my four different jobs at the moment is, is definitely key.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah, definitely. When you. Yeah, it does sound like four different jobs, doesn’t it? But you were talking me through and it sounds very structured and organised, which is good. I think, as I always tell people, a bit of structure is actually what give you the freedom. Right. And I think the, the sort of ideal day exercise, speaking of a journaling exercise is one I always give to clients early on because just painting that picture and it might feel really unrealistic, but you’ve just demonstrated that, okay, you can’t do that every day because then your bank account would be quite empty. But that’s, that’s a very feasible day and in fact is linked back to your business because you’re networking, you’re getting people in podcast, you might be meeting other founders and entrepreneurs that you’re going to be mentoring in the future and so on. Right.

Anna Lundberg:
And then another day day might be full on teaching, another day might have been flying somewhere to do your keynote talks. Right. So it’s, it’s to say every Day can be different. And again, we can’t create it all from day one, but it’s. It’s again bringing that big, unrealistic, perfect success, vision or dream, I suppose you’d call it there into reality of that can actually be a day. I just have to.

Stephanie Melodia:
Yeah, right.

Anna Lundberg:
I just need to go to that breakfast. You just need to do the Pilates. That’s all you need to do. I don’t like Pilates. I’m just putting out there. I prefer yoga. Apart from that, I’m with you because.

Stephanie Melodia:
I think there is such a danger of me, like I’m so happy. And this day that I’ve described to you that I’ve had so far is a dream day of mine. And I know, I’m very aware of the danger of how that might come across to some listeners, how like la di da or whatever, easy for you and everything else that that might come across. But to your point, what I want to underscore with that is it’s totally possible, it’s totally doable. Maybe again, not, not from one day to the next, but having that clarity. And again, this sort of links back to having those like, goals and structure and, and, and sort of processes in order to achieve that. And you know, just to clarify here as well, I mean, this event didn’t cost anything, like keeping things super practical. Yes.

Stephanie Melodia:
We’re currently recording this during the week of International Women’s Day. So there are more of these amazing events going on, but that didn’t cost me anything. I’ve got a. You know, I just want to make sure I’m being really clear about like how I’m able to do this Right. Because I’ve also. I bicycle everywhere. I’ve got a year’s membership to the Santander cycle, which isn’t that expensive. So for me it’s kind of girl math.

Stephanie Melodia:
It’s basically free to like hop on the Santander, but hop down there. Pilates was only at my gym included, so it wasn’t as if I’ve like paid expensive pack of classes at a dedicated studio. So, yeah, okay, it’s just my gym membership, but like I did that and I’m sat here now doing these things with you. So again, I don’t want it to sound, I don’t know, kind of flippant or, or easy or privileged or easy for you to say. But I do love what you’re adding to this, Anna, which is if you know what you want your dream day to look like, which what I’ve described is basically my Dream day. This is just proof that you can make it happen.

Anna Lundberg:
And it might not happen. You could do it today, but if you do it every day, like we said, you probably won’t get to the true freedom longer term. But you could definitely start by doing it today and then start working towards again that nuance and sort of shifting in that direction. Gosh, so many. So many directions my brain has taken me. But I’m gonna have to end it there, sadly. So let’s continue talking. Sorry to the rest of you, but we’re gonna leave it there for the purpose of the podcast.

Anna Lundberg:
Where can we find you? Where’s the best place to follow along on your journey?

Stephanie Melodia:
LinkedIn and Instagram are my two main channels. I’d love to hear from you. If you’re listening into this and you’re still with us, please do let me know your thoughts. What’s resonated, I hope haven’t come across kind of in. In the unintended sort of way with some of this, but would love to hear from you, Steph Melodea. Thankfully, there is only one of me, so if you just search my name, hopefully you should find me on there.

Anna Lundberg:
Yep, lovely. And it comes. Brings to mind an Instagram video I saw of an Olympic athlete. He was saying, I don’t have imposter syndrome. I’ve worked really hard to get here, here. Right, right. And there’s a bit of that and it feels completely foreign. And the fact that you’ve apologised so many times for saying, like, I’ve got the success that I’ve built, even though you admitted that you’ve, you know, hustled and worked really hard to get there.

Anna Lundberg:
I think that’s something we all need to work on from a mindset. Not to judge you at all, but just to say to all of us and our listeners, look, we. We work hard to get somewhere. We’re not saying we can have the Ferrari and the eight figure, whatever, and just do plasties all day and that’s it. Like, it. It takes certain things to happen and we need to work. But. But it is more feasible, perhaps, than we think.

Anna Lundberg:
And it can look. And it’s so personal as well. Right? That’s my main message, really. Success is personal. So just try to make some small shifts in that direction to begin with.

Stephanie Melodia:
But can I just ask really quickly, this rule of this, this athlete, what was their gender?

Anna Lundberg:
It was a woman.

Stephanie Melodia:
Oh, it was a woman.

Anna Lundberg:
This is why it was shared so widely. Yeah. This is why everyone was supporting it. And Saying, wow, this is amazing. She just said. Somebody said. And we. And it’s almost become a badge of honour to say, or at least it’s very accepted and normalised.

Anna Lundberg:
Oh, we all have imposter syndrome. And usually as a coach, I talk about it openly as well. And, you know, we have it even when we’re hugely successful. And it’s just very refreshing and unusual to hear because we have heard it from. From, yeah, Olympic gold medalists and army veterans and all sorts. Right. But it’s. It’s an interesting thought experiment, if not a model to copy, but just to think about, you know, that actually, can we be proud, please? And as you said, gratitude as well.

Anna Lundberg:
Right? Grateful for. Yes, sometimes we have been privileged and lucky, but we’ve made the most of what we’ve been given, which I think is the. The only fair thing we can do in that case.

Stephanie Melodia:
And I know we’re wrapping up just to quickly add to this very topical as well. Timothee Chalamet’s speech at the SWAG Awards last week. I don’t know if any of you have seen this or if you’ve seen this, Anna. I’m obsessed. He basically said. He was like, I know people don’t really talk like this, but the reality is I’m in pursuit of greatness. And everyone. He just.

Stephanie Melodia:
He struck the chord so perfectly with that speech because he was still. He was still grateful, he was respectful, he was down to earth and lovely, but he was also refreshingly honest and like, I’m here. I’m here to be one of the greats.

Anna Lundberg:
Like, so, yeah, love that Muhammad Ali kind of vibe. Yeah, I like it. I think you kind of have to have that, even if. Whether or not you admit it is another thing, but you kind of have to have that to reach the stars. But then greatness, you know, means different things to all of us. So, no, no pressure to kind of go for that, but I love that topical example as well. I am going to cut it off there, I’m afraid, Stephanie, but thanks so much. We’ll put all the details in the show notes.

Anna Lundberg:
Obviously, you’ve got your podcast as well that you mentioned, and lots of exciting things going, so thank you so much for sharing, really, as you said, some deeper philosophical bits as well as some really practical tips. So thanks so much. Looking forward to staying in touch with you as well. And best of luck for the next stage, whatever that looks like.

Stephanie Melodia:
Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it.

Anna Lundberg:
Thank you.

Stephanie Melodia:
Thank you.

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