Using Wealth Dynamics to Unlock Your Fastest Path to Wealth, Flow, and Fulfillment with Diane Mayor

Jaclyn Mellone

Diane. I’m so excited to have you here today.  

Diane Mayor

Hey, thanks for having me on. I’m excited to chat about this. 

Jaclyn Mellone

Yes. Oh my goodness. I have all the questions for you. I don’t know how we’re going to squeeze this all in,  but before we get started, take us back to when you were growing up, what were you the go-to gal for back then?

Diane Mayor

I would have to say that I was probably the go-to girl for everything nerdy. I was the person you can count on to have studied for the test. So to tell you what the important things were that you needed to know,  to have done the homework so that you could copy it, to tell you what had happened in the books that you were supposed to be reading for your book report. Even at university, I can remember people coming to me right before our tutorials saying,  hey, did you do the work? Can I copy it? I think I’ve always been that person who, if there’s a deadline and something needs to be done, can be relied upon to do it strangely enough.

Jaclyn Mellone

I think we all needed a friend like you.

Diane Mayor

Yeah. I mean, I got progressively more popular as I grow older.  

Jaclyn Mellone

I have this obsession with Lin-Manuel Miranda, and he just made a post recently talking about how he, for both Hamilton and In the Heights, he did the last song, the finale song for both musicals. He completed it on the last day of the workshop with the live actors who needed to perform it that day. He finished writing it that day.

And he said, yeah, I’m basically, I’m forever the kid doing their homework on the bus. And I was dying. I was totally the kid doing my homework on the bus.  And you were the one who was done and turned in early and all of the things. 

Diane Mayor

Well, not turned in early because I still add something, but it was definitely in the school bag. It was packed the night before next to the uniform, it was ready to go. I was super organized that nothing left to chance.

Jaclyn Mellone

I love it.  Fast forward to today, tell us what do you do and who do you help.  

Diane Mayor

So I help coaches, consultants, service providers find the superpower and use that to build a business that doesn’t lead to burnout. So it still hits those goals,  but does it in a way that feels really good,  basically.  

Jaclyn Mellone

Yes. Okay. Tell us more, what do you mean by that?

Diane Mayor

So, what it looks like from a business model perspective is I work in VIP days. I look at business strategy, and I don’t think that strategy is built-in 60-minute increments.

If you’re doing a 60-minute coaching call by the time you’ve said, hello, you’ve caught up.  You’ve got to leave some time for goodbye. And next steps you got maybe half an hour or 40 mins.  And when you’re looking at your whole business, and you’re trying to work out why something’s not clicking in your team or why something’s not clicking in your money-making side of things, why something feels all for you, you have to be able to dive into that whole picture.  And this is the reason why companies have off-sites.  They pick people up, they take them away from all their joint day jobs and distractions,  and they put them in a different place for a day or two or a half-day or whatever.  And so that’s what I do. I do three-hour or six-hour VIP sessions, depending on what the person needs in their business. And we work through what I call the superpower factor which is where do you fit in your business?  how do you make money based on you and how do you build a team and systems that support you?  So really putting you at the center of your business instead of your clients, but that takes time.

So, we do that in a three-hour session, and then there’s some follow-up support that goes with it. And then you go forth and implement the elements of the plan.  That’s basically what it looks like because I think a lot of people have built businesses that were not made for them. They’ve built systems on lifetime deals from AppSumo. They’ve built teams, often teams they’ve built little mini replicas of themselves. They offer, who will buy what from me? What do I have to sell? The people want, let me sell that, and then you would say, oh, I’ve been in business for two years, and I hate my life. And it all comes back to actually, who are you? What’s your superpower? How do you support that with your business instead of you trying to turn yourself into a pretzel to fit into the business you’ve built. 

Jaclyn Mellone

Oh, this message needs to be preached just so loud because I think in our industry, one, all of the points that you mentioned, but something I see too, and I’ve done. I’ve been subject to, I don’t know how I say that,  but something I’ve done too. My first business model was based on my mentors. We follow people online and we’re like, oh,  that’s how they’re being successful. That’s how they’re making money. And we think that maybe we think we’re similar to them just by personality. I’m outside, or maybe it just looks fun, or we just think that’s was going to get results. And we model that and, with my first business model, that’s what I did. I had built a membership modeled off of my mentors, and it wasn’t really a membership. It was really just a very cheap group coaching program.

That’s in retrospect, it’d be, if you have under a hundred people,  you’re really just undercharging for group coaching.  But I also, in terms of having to create content and keep up with all of that stuff with a membership and the team and all of the logistics of it, I felt like I was always on and that people were paying very little and just expected whether they expected it or not. I felt like I had to be, on-call anytime with that.  And when I started looking closer at it, I said, oh, but there’s two of them. And they have full-time employees,   and their different skill sets are these. And ultimately, they ended up deciding that the business model wasn’t even for them. But when I started looking at myself as just me trying to do all of that and realizing how hard it was for me, it took me a while to realize, oh, I’m making this really hard on myself, and I don’t have to.  

Diane Mayor

Yeah. And I think what we see a lot in the business coaching space is I come from a corporate background where over many years, I got to go into progressively more strategic meetings until you’re at very high-level learning how people think.

I think a lot of the business coaches that we see have actually done one thing successfully and are now coaching people to do that one thing versus looking at the business holistically, they’re going, you need to do it this way.  Whether that is you must do reels. You must do marketing. You must do webinars. You need to have a group program, a membership.  They have been incredibly successful at what they do. And from a place of purely wanting to help people. I don’t think it’s malicious at all.  They’re out there sharing that message without realizing that people are internalizing that as this is the way to build my business.

And once people cycle through that, a couple of times, each next person starts to look like the thing that might save you. I’ve been in business, it’s not working. This is the thing because look at these results,   it’s very hard to know what that person’s skill set is, what their backup is, what their support is, what their home life is, what their experience is, what their audience size is in order for you to compare.

And I mean that with the person teaching it, and every single testimonial that you’re reading because a lot of those big number testimonials are driven off of huge audiences that have been built over years.  And so instead of saying, okay, here, you are individual CEO who wants X type of business. I’m going to assume that everybody wants to make a million dollars doing it my way, and that’s what I’m going to teach.

And then when you get into that stage where you feel this doesn’t right to me,  you’re encouraged to believe that it’s your mindset or a block,   or you didn’t manifest hard enough. I’ve definitely heard that one.

Jaclyn Mellone

I had to take myself off of you for that.  All right.

Diane Mayor

What happens is that the longer you keep doing this, the longer you keep trying to fit your square peg into all these round holes or I don’t know diamond holes, triangle holes because you’re trying every option, the less confident you’re going to feel in your own decision-making and your own ability to know what is best for your business. And, hey, presto, mindset problems blocks, so it becomes this like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the longer you try to do this thing. And so it’s almost really difficult to do, but it’s stepping back saying if I knew what to do in my business, what would that be?

And then if you’re in someone’s program,  taking what you need from it. And I go into a program,  learn their webinar format and leave. Ignore the rest of the stuff that you don’t need. And that makes you into a different kind of CEO.  

Jaclyn Mellone

It’s funny that you say that because that’s exactly how I treat programs. I just go in and get what I need. And not everybody’s like that though. And I’ve seen that with my own students where they want to go step-by-step in and all of the things. And that’s great because as a course creator, as a program, you can deliver that. I don’t want everyone to be like me and just take a module or two, but sometimes that’s all people need. And that’s something that I’ve always thought maybe it was a rule-breaking thing that I did, but there’s no permission to do that. That’s exactly how you should be thinking about it.  

Diane Mayor

And I think it also depends a little bit on where you are in business. if this is your very first business, I suggest you follow somebody and do what they tell you to do as a starting point. But as you experiment and go, this doesn’t fit me. Walk away from the dialogue that is telling you that it’s about you and go. This isn’t the right business model, who has something different? Is this the right business model?

Okay, and then eventually, you’ve tried so many things that you can take a moment and be like, hmm, I actually don’t like any of them. What’s my own idea with a little more confidence? I think the problem is that most people don’t, by the time they get to that point where they’re ready to have their own idea, they don’t have the confidence to have their own idea.

Jaclyn Mellone

That’s such a good point.  As you were saying this, what I was thinking of is this is something that isn’t just a business thing. When I think about being in high school or college and trying to think of what I wanted to do in my career, or, in my mid-twenties, I had my quarter-life crisis, and I left working for my dad to go back into marketing.

I look at those pivotal points where I wasn’t happy with what I was doing. And I had an internship in college where it seems like I know what I wanted to do. I wanted to be doing graphic design and online sales and all of this stuff. I was in this really cool environment,  and there were a lot of opportunities, and I was making good money.

But what I realized is I was sitting at my desk every single day, and I didn’t really have any interaction with other people.  And I need interaction with other people. So, I thrive off of that.  And it’s been interesting now, fast forward and coming off of a year where we really didn’t have a lot of interaction with other people in our everyday lives, every, whatever lives.  I did have interaction over zoom, but I feel, I don’t know, as we’re coming out of this, where I live, we’re able to be, seeing people more in doing things and I didn’t realize how much I missed it and how much I needed it.  

And now I’m really re-evaluating how I run my day-to-day. How can I add more humanness to this? Because I need more people willing to just really feel like myself.  So it’s funny because I had noticed that early on in my career,  and then being in this online space and also being in a global panini press or whatever, we’re calling pandemonium that I wasn’t getting that,  I realized how much I value it and want to find more ways to work that in.

Diane Mayor

Yeah. And I think it’s one of those things about the pandemic that stopped you and forced you to have that look. But what if you stopped on a regular basis and just checked in and the same way? 

Jaclyn Mellone

Yes. Well, and realizing that it can be different.  And when we have our own business, sometimes we don’t, I think that things like we have full abilities and make it totally different, but it doesn’t feel like, oh no, I’m going to go to a different job.

Or like me leaving, working with my dad to go find marketing.  We don’t always think about those drastic changes in our business. Or maybe they feel scarier where it goes, oh wait, I’ve been doing business this way. And now I’m going to do it a totally different way. Going from being a service provider, to be a course creator is something that’s pretty common in our industry, but that’s a big jump, and making that jump can feel really scary or just impossible to make happen.

Diane Mayor

Yeah. I think what happens when you come into the online world, and I’m sure this happened to you as well, the first time you’re like, okay, I’m going to have a business. And you go, what skills do I have that people will pay money for? And you go, okay, these are my skills. Great. So I’ve got my skills. Okay, let me go sell them. And people say, I want that one-to-one. I want that in a group. I want that with you standing on your head, I want you available 24/7.  Here’s what I want, and you go and say,  I’ll do anything for money. Here we go. And then what happens is you’re excited about the money and the success.

And I go, look, I’m making money, and I’m not in a job that you don’t notice that what you’re selling isn’t lighting you up, that it isn’t interesting to you that isn’t exciting to you. And by the time you do, you’ve now built a business as paying the bills. And it’s very hard to step back from that level of “success” and potentially start from scratch.

And this is not purely an entrepreneurial thing. I can remember being five years into my banking career.  My friend and I started at the same time at different banks. And he took a step backward and wanes basically into almost the training program at his bank to change the department that he wanted to go into and he’s wildly successful at it.

But I can remember at the time thinking, why would you want to step back five years? But he had this much longer view of where he wanted to get to and was able to do that. And I think that’s where we have to get to, we have to go,  okay. Yes. I’ve invested this time, and that time is now gone, and I’m not saying you just stop. Don’t burn your business down to change your business model. You decide what your business model is.

You, yeah, me too. I don’t recommend it. I’ve done it a couple of times, and I really do not recommend it. But it’s more looking at what is working, and what isn’t working, and how do you transform it into something that makes you excited to go to work. You finish the day, and you’re still pumped and ready to have a social life on top of it versus getting to the end of the day and face planting into your pillow and having a quiet little cry to yourself and dragging yourself to your desk the next morning, even if it’s paying the bills because that is just a job.

Jaclyn Mellone

That’s so true. I also think that sometimes I don’t know the industry has, I mean, there’s not like there’s a flowchart with this anywhere, but I feel there’s this hierarchy,  that’s just an invisible hierarchy that people don’t talk about of different types of offers. And people may think that doing a certain kind of offer, maybe taking a step back versus another type of offer.

And that’s not real. This is just, I don’t believe that offers are better than other offers. And my guess is that you don’t either. It’s really about what’s best for you.  

Diane Mayor

No, it’s completely about what is going to work for you. I think, yes, there is this thing in the business about the specific order that you are meant to do things in.

And therefore if you choose to stay at 0.1, you have somehow not grown, and you were just lucky that the very first thing you did, the very first style of coaching or service provided was the thing that felt good to you.  Just smile, sweety, get them, and let them get on with it. And just, you just keep doing you.  I’m very much in that camp. Can you tell, I don’t take it personally at all. 

Jaclyn Mellone

I love it. Well, I remember when I had that membership,  I got a lot of praise and attention for this membership.  And this was, I had under a hundred members. This was not a huge moneymaker.  It was recurring revenue, and I did get a few thousand dollars a month recurring revenue, but this was not like put me on the map or anything,  but because I had gotten so many comments saying, wow, how did you do that? And tell me about your membership. 

People seem to be really interested and excited about it or want to interview me about it, or it seems there’s a really strong connection point.  It really felt like I was taking a step back by shutting it down and starting to do one-on-one coaching back in 2017 that this happened.  And that felt like a setback as people go, oh, you do one-on-one coaching. It’s seemed to be, even though I was able to shut down this membership where I was charging, I think ultimately $97 a month and then start charging $5,000 for coaching packages. I was instantly able to be bringing in more revenue,  making a bigger impact on my clients,  but I was so afraid of that perception. I’m so glad it didn’t stop me.  But there is that, oh, membership, versus one-on-one that I had to just not let ego get in the way of that.  

Diane Mayor

Yeah. I think that’s a really difficult one because people would go, oh, you must not be at capacity if you don’t need to do group. It’s more on, no, I could also just choose not to be at capacity. But I think it comes back to since memberships were super trendy in 2017. It was the thing to do.  And so everyone wanted a membership, and you choose not to have a membership has nothing to do with you. It was a hundred percent about how you were making them feel about their choice to have a membership.

Yeah. And so every time somebody is pushing you against a direction, against a business model, you have to ask yourself if it’s about you or it’s about them.  And do they know what you know? Now, I don’t mean you should be talking to your partner about it or your business coach who’s deep in the weeds with you and knows exactly what your thinking is. But your peers and your friends, it’s scary to other people when you make a big change because it reflects back on them whether they would be so afraid to do that change.

So what if you’re right? What if you’re right in one-to-one is the way forward, and now they have to do one-to-one, and they’re terrified they have to do one-to-one, or what if memberships are the emperor’s new clothes and they got on the bandwagon too late. And so it’s all about their internal dialogue about what your decision means to them.

People like to keep you in the bubble with them because you validate them. It’s the same. When people try to leave corporate jobs, everyone tells you you’re insane.  Why would you walk away from the salary?  What about medical?  Some of it is because people care about your stability. And some of it is because you, choosing not to be in a corporate job, say something to them about them choosing to stay in a corporate job.

Jaclyn Mellone

Oh, mic drop with this. It’s so true, and this is something that has even been bothering me lately with the idea that we wrap our identity around our business model. And I can see this as, okay, well, if I  wrapped my identity around being a course creator or service provider or whatever the different ones are, and there’s a community in that where I’m able to connect with other people.

People are able to maybe target me easier with marketing with that,  but it does make it when we’ve taken that on as our identity that makes it harder to make a change. And we are not our business model,  although, maybe, we should be in a different kind of… I’m joking when I say this because of where I’m going with this conversation with Diane. But yeah, I don’t think that they need to be one and the same. 

 Diane Mayor

No, and I think it’s really dangerous for it to be one and the same. So as somebody who had to do a lot of work around identity, I was in corporate for more than a decade. This was a hundred percent my identity. I quit my job. Nobody talks about the side of leaving corporate, and all you see about leaving corporate is the beaches, and I have all the vacays. Nobody tells you what it is like to wake up the day off you quit a long-term career because your identity is so wrapped up in you being that thing five days a week. That now, you have to be something completely new.

And what I did with that was I just replaced it with traveling, so I wrapped my identity and being a nomad. And then, when I needed it to desperately stop traveling and change that again, I had to recycle through this identity thing.  And so I think that’s why I’m a little bit more, not necessarily bulletproof, but I’m a little bit more of, my business is not me.

My business model is not me. I have changed my business multiple times,  a knock on the cocktail napkin because I’ve been through what it’s like to connect yourself so deeply to some kind of description of you. And I think that is something that we should encourage in entrepreneurship.

You heard me say on my intro coaches, consultants, service providers because we’re taught, you have to niche tell people who you’re talking to,  and if they don’t have an identity, how can you target them? So we’re encouraged to have that whole thing wrapped up in a nice big bow., so there are loads of stuff to untangle.

Jaclyn Mellone

I am really fascinated by this tool, this assessment that you used to help guide people on their business model because what should that be? What is the best way for me to have a business? And that’s a question that if we’re not always asking ourselves, we should be asking ourselves that. And it’s really interesting to me that there’s this assessment that can help guide us. So tell us about that. 

Diane Mayor

So what the assessment is designed to be less of a personality profile and more of a business developmental. What it does is it points you to what gets you into the flow,  and this is the other F word in entrepreneurship. You need to be in the flow, everything’s easier when you’re in the flow. If you just get into the flow, great, but nobody’s telling you how to get into the flow.  There’s this like, oh, if you set up this, and you… Where’s the step-by-step manual? And basically, that’s what this assessment does. So wealth dynamics was set up by a guy named Roger Hamilton, and he went back to the chain which is what DISC and MBTI are based on they’re based on translations of parts of it.

So it has a really solid grounding in tests that we’re used to hearing about, but this was designed specifically for entrepreneurs. It’s designed specifically to look at what gets you into the flow because when you’re in flow, you can be consistent. You can deliver all the time, and you’re better for your clients. And so you can raise your prices and if you’re in the flow, you don’t need to rest and recover as much as when you’re out of the flow.  So you naturally create capacity. So you can create leverage not by doing a group program, but simply by sticking to activities that don’t drain the energy out of you that don’t make you need to recover. That doesn’t need to make you need to have a little cry or a nap or a three-day weekend to recover from.   And it’s so interesting to read your personality back to you to have a report say something to you,  for every person I find there’s usually one thing in the report that really hits hard.

For me, it landed in a way that DISC never did that. MBTI was so complicated.  Enneagram felt like it was a choose your own adventure.  It really guides you to, hey, these are your natural strengths. These are your natural weaknesses.  Therefore, this is what’s going to take you to your goals as quickly as possible.

It’s going to make you the most valuable, and it’s going to give you the most capacity if you stay in this zone of genius or in flow.  But it was almost like an instruction manual for flow. So what it’s made up of essentially four energies. One is the energy of ideas and innovation. One is more people,  the other is more resources, and the other one is more systems and data.

And when you think about that, if you think about that in a natural cycle in a business. It starts with, what are we going to do? What’s the idea? Who’s going to do it? When are we going to do it? And then how are we going to do it? So those four energies need to work together in a business. 

They need to work. They work together in nature as well. If you think about spring into summer, spring is everything that’s new.  Summer is everything that’s fun.  Autumn, fall is everything that’s grounded.  And then winter is black, white cut and dried, so it really reflects the cycles that we see naturally in business already.

It just points you in the direction of your natural talent and that’s really different from your skills. So remember, as I was saying,  when you start, everyone will say, what skills do you have and what can you sell? And off you go selling your skills. When the reality is, if you sold your superpower, your innate talent, you would be happier. Your clients would get better results, and you would hit your goals faster, easier, smoother. So that’s what it’s really designed to do. And there are eight profiles that are combinations of the four energies.

Jaclyn Mellone

I love how you broke that down in terms of the four sections. So does that mean this is something, so the tool is used for us to take, to see which, and be in the flow state. Our business model is going to be best for us, but maybe this is something we could use to build our team too. 

Diane Mayor

100%. It is designed to,  so what happens in a business is, and I see this over and over and over again is people hire themselves because you know how to relate to that person. You love the same things.  You’re nerding out on if you’re a systems person, you’re nerding out on the systems, if you’re a people person, you’re having the best conversation ever in the interview, and it happens everywhere. It happens in a corporate as well, just as much, and what this tool does is it says, well, hey, here’s your superpower.

Here’s what, you’re missing some superpower. How about we find people with those superpowers, and you could form your little Guardians of the Galaxy Avengers, Power Rangers, Little Squad to drive the business, and fill in those gaps so that you have that whole cycle.  You have a person who is naturally innovative. You have a person who is people-oriented.  You have the person who’s watching when and where things are happening all the time. And making sure that everything stays on track. And then you have the person who’s monitoring it, building it,  checking that it’s working, and improving those systems. So it’s kind of that cycle in nature, that cycle in business, you want to have that cycle in your team as well.

Jaclyn Mellone

Okay. So can you share what your profile is?  

Diane Mayor

Sure. So my profile is a creator profile,  so I am 100% the innovation or ideas energy. This means basically, I like to have a lot of ideas. I like everything to be really new, really fast. I get bored really easily and, I am very difficult to have as a team leader because I am on idea #17 while you are still implementing idea #1 that I told you about three hours ago.

Jaclyn Mellone

That sounds like me. 

Diane Mayor

So, it’s a really challenging space to be as a leader,  but a great person to have. This is the person in the mastermind, and I can say this because this is me who you asked the question, and this person has 40 ideas. And you’re kind of left like a deer in headlights, staring at them saying, I don’t know what to do with all of that. But most people would guess that I was more a Lord which is a hundred percent debt systems and data energy because of my corporate background. I’m an accountant by training. I love spreadsheets. I’m known for my love of the spreadsheet. 

Jaclyn Mellone

Oh my gosh. I have seen her spreadsheets in detail, in action. But that is your…

Diane Mayor

That is my learned skill set. And what’s really interesting is I don’t know if you do this in the U.S, but I did aptitude tests when I was, I don’t know, 16 and 17 and trying to decide what I wanted to do as my job. Because in South Africa, you very much go to university for the job that you want. It’s not like in America or in the UK where you might do a geography degree and then become an accountant.

And I can remember him saying to me when we were talking about different careers, and he said to me, look,  you can be an accountant. He’s said, you can do it. You’ll be good at it. You’re going to be so bored, so I don’t think you should do it.  So obviously I became an accountant. 

Jaclyn Mellone

Challenge accepted.

Diane Mayor

Yeah. Don’t tell me not to do something. But in South Africa, it was a different world. Your opportunities outside of very specific professional careers had very different financial ramifications.  So, it was a safe bet, especially knowing that I was going to leave,  but what did I do?

Skill set, skill set, skill set, skill set, skill set burnt out, flamed out completely, and then came around to, oh yeah. I’m super bored doing that and my natural space. The thing that I’ve always been as a kid is, I’ve always been the ideas and huge fantasy and story concocting and, games that came out of scenarios and stuff.

So, it comes right back to what’s naturally in you.  And they even test kids, there is a wealth dynamics kids version as well, so I can fool everybody. One of the things I can say about this test is, once you take it, it’s the same with, you take any of the tests, you started guessing what is your husband? What is your wife? What does your boyfriend? What is your partner? What is your like child?  But you don’t know unless you see that person in that flow state unless you know, that that person loses track of time when they’re drawing the world’s biggest mind map.  You’re not going to know that it’s an idea generation thing. You’re going to see the spreadsheets and assume that because they’re good at something that’s the superpower and we do this to ourselves.

Yeah. If I’d read anything about it before, I probably would have guessed that I was Lord or mechanic which is the improver one combination of the two.  But when I read the creator, brief, one of the things about the creator is they plant the tree and then come back to pull it up, to see if the roots have grown.

Is it happening? Let’s go, let’s go. Let’s go,  and that’s very me. I’ve had 20 ideas since breakfast. So that is one thing that I always do, to caution people. I think when you’re looking at something like DISC which is behavior-based, it’s much easier to go and that person’s probably a D or an S or whatever same with MBTI a little bit. In Enneagram, your guess is as good as mine.  And I can’t follow who has what in an Enneagram.  but yeah, that’s always the caution that I give people with this one is, it is something so personal that you may never see. And that’s also why, when I’m talking to a client, I’m never going to tell all of them what their profile is.

The taste is going to tell them what their profile is, but that has to resonate with them because, if they’ve taken it from a skill set perspective, instead of a flow perspective, if they weren’t thinking about their business, they were thinking about something at home.  I can’t work through what they said in the test. So there is an element of having that moment for me, let’s say reading about pulling up the seed or from reading your profile and say, hmm, I’m not sure. And then going, okay. How do I investigate this further?  

Jaclyn Mellone

So I wanna go down that road, but first, I just want to ask you when you discovered that you were a creator, how did you change your business model? Or did you change your business model? Or were you already in something that was in support of that?

Diane Mayor

It was validating to me because I have been saying for years, like two business coaches, when people would say to me, what do you want to do? What’s your dream business? What’s your dream business? I have said all I want to do all day long is have ideas that other people implement. I just wanted ideas for other people’s businesses. That’s all I want to do. And everyone would say, yeah, okay, that’s a nice idea to answer.  So I think it validated that and allowed me to really step into, what I do now which is, to have ideas for people on my business strategy.

And it’s one of my friends who’s been in a most about me. He calls me the idea savant. She was said, you just never stuck for an idea.  And it just allowed me to feel, this is okay, this is actually something valuable. And allowed me to be, this has value and people need this. I just need to learn how to communicate that to people.

So I don’t think my business model changed as much as my communication change. It became very much around, like, how do I explain why I’m valuable? Because it’s not something that people see every day. It’s not obvious, I’m going to do a spreadsheet for you. 

Jaclyn Mellone

Yeah. Okay, very interesting.  So, I took the assessment, and I got one result and some of it resonated with me, but it didn’t totally fit. And the examples, especially in terms of how I would use it, the most just seemed to vary off from how I don’t know from anything that would be a natural fit for me.  So then a couple of friends had said that they thought I was something else. Do you remember they thought that I was something else?

So now I’m very confused, but also really fascinated with this in going down the rabbit hole because I think this is really powerful to be able to use as a framework in terms of how are you in flow. And this is something that I’ve been already working on with my team in terms of getting things off of my plate, that I have a lot of resistance around, or that is hard for me because then it’s very draining.

Anything about details is draining for me.  And so the less I’m doing those things, the more I’m able to do things that I do best. It’s interesting though, my dream, I don’t know if this will resonate with you at all, but my ultimate goal for the business is to only have to do things that require me to just show up. So whether it’s showing up for a podcast interview, someone interviewing me, me interviewing the meetings with the team,  collaborating, brainstorming, or anything like that. Also, speaking, hosting events, group coaching calls, one-on-one coaching calls, anything where I’m just with other people and showing up. Those are my favorite stuff.

Anything that requires me to sit down by myself and focus, that’s what I really struggle with.  I do need my alone time too though. I love my alone brainstorming time. So I still have that balance, but in terms of the things on my calendar, those are my ultimate goal. Are there questions, I guess, that you would ask me, but also anyone to help narrow down if you take the test and you’re not sure it’s the right result? How do you figure that out? 

Diane Mayor

In the test, it’s going to give you your primary profile and your secondary profiles. Now, the way to think about that is to think about you’re an airplane. And when you’re in your primary profile, you’re in the flow and you go the fastest if you just keep going straight.  However, you do have two wings that you can lean on to stabilize. What happens when you lean on a wing? If you think about a plane, it goes slightly out of kilter turns just a little bit off-center and so it’s just going to take you that little bit longer to get to your goals.

So I like to think of being in your primary profile as being 100% in flow.  It’s energy-generating. You’re pumped. You’re ready to go.  I like to think of being in your wing as you’re at the same energy level as when you started. It almost generates enough energy for you to do the thing and stay in flow in the thing. But you’re not, if you went in tired, you’re coming outside, it’s not going to pump you up and hype you up. The first thing I always say to people if they’re unsure about their profile is to read their two secondary profiles and see if one of them lands more because they all just want to either side of your primary profile, and there’s a chance that you could have answered a question slightly differently that just has bumped you very slightly into one versus the other.

So that would be where I would start. If it really doesn’t resonate, then I would strongly suggest talking to somebody who can have the conversation with you.  I always say when I do a booster shot call with people,  the thing I’m looking for is either the person is comfortable, that they know that that’s their profile and they were happy in it. And we look at how do we take that forward?  Or they come and they’re like, I’m not a hundred percent sure. And then we spend the time finding that profile because ultimately it’s your profile. You are the person who knows when you feel in flow. I can’t see a flow on you, so that would be where I would start very often if you’re completely the opposite.

So I have had people who have come in full winter energy and feeling like they’re full people, energy. That to me, I’m going, were you answering from a skill set or where you’re answering on flow? When it’s way off, there’s a very good chance that you are answering.  You’ve done the taste from a skill set perspective, and you might want to go back and really ground yourself in how do I energetically feel and try retaking it.

Jaclyn Mellone

Now I’m thinking, where was I? I’m notoriously a bad test taker with these things. I tend to not be very self-aware, or I tend to operate a certain way. That’s what I know that Enneagram is not your favorite, but with Enneagram, I tested as a three every time I took it because I was operating like a three, but my motivations were not the same as a three.

So with Enneagram, once we got underneath that, and we go, what are the motivations? What are the core fears? That didn’t resonate. And that’s how I ultimately determined that I was seven.  So, what does it say? 

Diane Mayor

I tested 1, 8, and 7. The means for all of them resonate for me. And what frustrates me about Enneagram is that it’s very open to interpretation. It’s story-based, it’s handed down from person to person, and there is a little bit of, well, I don’t want to be an eight, so I’m going to be a seven because I think seven’s cooler, and so I just am.  Whereas at least with this one, I find most people are banging on.

I’ve had one or two who once we’ve talked it through, have gone, oh no, I totally do that. I totally do that.  And I’ve had some people who have a really interesting case where we had, where somebody was coming out as the complete opposite of where, when they heard me talk about it, they thought they should be. And that was the role that they needed to fill in their family.

They filled the gap, and it was so built into them as a skill set from being a child that when they will ask the questions, they automatically filled the gap. But actually, when they thought about when they got into the flow, it was a completely different onset. And so I think that’s another thing if you’re reading a profile and you think, oh, this doesn’t sound like me. Ask yourself, what does sound like you when you’re in flow? What does it feel like? And if you haven’t, if you don’t know what flow feels like, people describe it as time flying by, or not noticing the time being in the zone. You forget to eat, you forget to get up from your desk, and some people really have never experienced it in their business. So if you can’t picture that in your business, go into your personal life.

Do you find flow playing a musical instrument? Chances are you have that creative idea, energy. It means you’re one of those three profiles that hold that energy.  Are you the person who loses track of time at every party? Chances are, you have that people energy. And so which of those profiles is resonating for you? When you get the report, you do get details on your primary and your secondary and quite a lot of detail, but you also do get an overview of all of them. And when people do the test through me, I have a whole podcast for 20 minutes, podcasts that walks you through, basically what the report’s telling you in a shorter form that talks about all the profiles as well and what their superpower is, and what their kryptonite is so that you can start to think, oh, actually that sounds like me. Let me dig more into that profile.

Jaclyn Mellone

Now, I’m just, of course, my own wheels are spinning. Where does this leave me? I feel like I’m equally creative and people-oriented. And I think that’s where I’m struggling, I guess. When I was a kid,  I was so awkward and such a dork, and I really struggled with that probably until college is when I found it easy to make friends.

But up until then, I struggled a lot in just being a big dork growing up.  But very creative teachers writing home daydreaming and all of that. It was very, very natural to me. That assessment that you took, I took, and the only thing I remember from it is that one of the options was being a reverend.  I thought that was hilarious.  

Diane Mayor

Oh my gosh, I definitely did not get that.  

Jaclyn Mellone

My dad is a Catholic, my mom is Jewish, and I’m going to be a reverend guy.  Where’s the career path here?  But does that ever happen where someone feels like they’re… 

Diane Mayor

Well, if you were split between two of the energies, you’re one of the corner profiles. So you have eight profiles, and four of them are pure energy- the pure one energy. And then the others are split between the two. Do you mind if I say what your profile is?

Jaclyn Mellone

You can share. Yes. 

Diane Mayor

When I look at your graph, you have a lot of blaze energy, a lot of people energy. Your people energy is 60%. Your creative energy is only 36%.  So where you’re seeing them being 50-50, I’m seeing a being closer to like 60-30 from your answers. But that doesn’t mean that you’re not in your star profile way more. The thing for me is Jaclyn’s profile is a supporter, natural leader, motivator, people person, brings the best out of everybody, builds people’s competence, leads great, but doesn’t like numbers and details. 

On the one side, she has a star secondary profile which is all about attraction, very outgoing, the speakers on stage, love to be in front and center of the crowd.  Their weakness is detail, and sometimes forgetting that people have to deliver what they promise.  Stars seem to be really cracking salespeople.

Supporters tend to be really good team leaders of teams, not necessarily managing, but leading a team.  The reason for me, why I lead on to support, I think more than you do is that the other secondary profile for a supporter is the deal-maker, and the deal-maker’s skill is those deep, deep relationships and connections.

So if you think about it in a, in that cycle, turn that we’re talking about the stars, the one that goes, hello, new business. And then the supporter is the one that’s going, oh, hi, new business, meet the team. This is how I’m going to support you.  And the deal maker is the one that goes, I’m gonna take that relationship, and I’m going to bury them.

I’m going to, I’m going to be so intertwined with them that they can never leave us, not in a codependent kind of way, but that real, depth of relationship. And for me, I have seen you do that with people one-on-one in several instances.  So yes, I think you have the star, who’s very happy, guests speaking and showing up and being on stage and talking. But I think you equally have that deep, deep connection of the deal-maker which I don’t see in a lot of people who I speak to, who are stars.  

It’s not a natural business flow state. I think you would be as happy spending a day one-on-one deep-diving into something with someone as you would be on stage presenting to a room full of people. 

I think the other thing to remember is just because this is your innate talent and your fastest path to growth, so your fastest path to growth is essentially people. Solving problems with people, somebody who’s in Lord energy, their fastest path to growth to wealth to results is systems. It’s just a different way of handling it. The other reason why it speaks to me more than a star for you is both the star and the supporter and you’ll make all extroverts which means using people to solve problems or get results.  However, at the top, stars like to speak, so they use people by speaking to people while deal-makers get results by listening to people, listening for, what do you need? How can I help you?  

And the supporter is a 50-50. They both listen and they speak. And that’s why they’re so good with people, in leading people.  And so for me, that coaching that you have feels more supported to me than a star. 

Jaclyn Mellone

No, that really resonates because I do, I don’t like to just tell people, much like you where, I don’t believe in the cookie cutter. I want to be able to customize things. So I want to listen and get to know them and understand and see how you know about them and the business and their ideal client and all that stuff.  But I also have the ideas and want to share, and  I have an abundance of ideas. And so it’s nice to be able to have people to give those ideas too, so I don’t go create 1200 businesses off of them.

So when I was reading the supporter, it gave a lot of examples of CEOs and COOs and that’s I think what I was, say, okay, I don’t want to manage people. That is not my skill set at all. I need people to help me manage myself because me managing people is, I have managed people from a young age, I’ve had management positions, but I  am not great at it.

In my opinion. It’s certainly not natural for me, and it’s not enjoyable for me. I don’t feel in flow when I’m managing. That way leading a community feels different. So what would you say? Because these aren’t entrepreneurs. I think that’s what I was really struggling with, the supporter doesn’t really see where I would fit into this in terms of a business model. But are there business models for supporters?  

Diane Mayor

So your success is gonna come from driving a team-based. So if you wanted to scale, I would be looking at, how do we build a team? How do we build a team that delivers what you do and that you are essentially driving the team? Why don’t you drive the business? But the team is doing all the bits and pieces. It’s that ability to let other people shine. When I see supporters come through, it’s coaches. But genuine coaches, not people like me who are strategists because I do not.

I’m a creator. I have all the ideas. I want to tell you all my ideas. I don’t want to ask questions for you to find your own idea. Whereas you are much more in that coaching space of how can I bring the best out of this person that I’m working to? You know, we’ve worked together, I’ve experienced it.

That’s why I know it’s there. It’s about finding how you can build a business that’s based on relationships for you in that supportive space. If you were in that store space, I would be, how can we build a business that puts you in front of a lot of people as often as possible? What’s your visibility plan? Because that’s where you shine.

I have a friend who’s a star who literally just has to show up to a summit, and people are like, take my money. It’s just her jam, but when I have to do a summit, I have to be like, okay, let me prepare, sit down, and do slides.  I’ve had 17 new ideas since I submitted mine. I can’t even remember what I submitted.

So it’s about finding, it’s not about necessarily changing what you do, it’s about changing how you do it and cutting out the things you’re not so great at, or giving them to a team member. You have a couple of options.  If something isn’t in your wheelhouse, just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should, you can automate it, you can delegate it, or you can transform it.

You can find a way that it works for you.  And if it’s something that we really can’t avoid, what we look for is how can we buffer it on either side with what does work for you. So can we give you one really difficult day a month and the day before and the day after you’re doing the thing that you’ve loved the most in the world?

So you build energy before you do it, you lose a bit of energy and then you build up again afterward. It’s only that one day that’s really awful versus death by a thousand paper cuts where every day you’re doing a little something that’s not great.  

Jaclyn Mellone

I like the batching of the awful concept. 

Diane Mayor

I have a podcast. I have a podcast episode on it. I can’t remember the number, but if you look at my Instagram account, it’s the tweet that says, Batch Please. And it’s all about batching. Forget about batching content, but batch what’s not natural for you. 

Jaclyn Mellone

You definitely have my wheels turning. I appreciate the personalized coaching here, especially because you have seen that other side of me. So you know from the inside. 

Diane Mayor

Yeah. And I think the thing to remember whichever those you decide on, star or supporter, your hiring, remember you have very little resource and very little systems superpowers.

Jaclyn Mellone

Oh, I’m very aware of this. 

Diane Mayor

So those would naturally be the superpowers that you hire for whether the person has a hundred percent of that energy or at least has it in their profile.  The deal-maker is good at bringing people together. The people with more resources energy are incredible at timing. So it’s like traders, like buying and selling things at exactly the right moment because they’re so aware of everything that’s going on.

So this is a great place to put customer service. And then as we go around OBMs project, managers are more of that combination of the systems and that timing whereas everything, where are the resources. And then we go up, and the Lord is more like your accountant, your systems person.  And then the mechanic is at your like improver person.

So for you, you’d probably want a trader who’s pure tempo energy because you have very little tempo energy.  And then probably a mechanic which has half that winter systems data energy, and half the dynamo energy because that will bolster your ideas energy that you already have, but with the system spin on it. So they’ll look at how do we improve everything. 

Jaclyn Mellone

That might be the person who could be like, okay, let’s take what you have. And turn this into a bunch of content like Gary Vee type of stuff.

Diane Mayor

That’s the person who they will look at, they’re all about, how do we make everything better? So the mechanic is less of a starter of the idea nugget than the creator, but we’ll take whatever you have in place and be like, there’s a better way to do this. The tempo person, the person with the resources person, it’s the person who’s going to go, we have got these 17 things on. You’re going to need to hold. The Lord or the accumulator owner say, okay, here’s the plan to do that, and here’s how we’re gonna measure it. Here are the KPIs. You want to get some of that system’s energy or some of that tempo energy into your team to balance you.

Jaclyn Mellone

A hundred percent yes. I’ve always, I’m not the person that hires people like me. I need people, not like me. We can only have one person like me on the team.

Diane Mayor

It’s a very supportive thing to say because you’re very people. You’re very people away. You’re very aware of what’s going to make a good team. It doesn’t mean that you are micromanaging them, but you’re aware of who needs to come into these roles to get stuff done.  

Jaclyn Mellone

Okay. I’m going to lean into this.

Diane Mayor

I think, if people do take the test, my one thing would be, just ignore the example people. They’re great examples, but they’re quite corporate examples.  And I think the reason for that is because this is so innate. You need somebody to be really publicly known for a long period of time to be able to see what that hidden skill set was. If someone’s done something for like 40 years, chances are that’s something that’s a natural talent for them.  

But what I find is sometimes people react really strongly to the person being given as an example saying, well, I’m not like them, which makes you want to negate everything in the profile. So to me, it’s great. Roger will probably find me if he hears me say it. But for me, I would almost just do this resonate with me without worrying about who the example is of the person publicly given for this.

Jaclyn Mellone

Okay. I’m a bad example of that. But I like examples, that bring it to life. So I’m glad we were able to give ourselves as examples of it today because I think you need that context a little bit in terms of, okay, how do I apply this?  And it’s so hard to not look at the examples, but I appreciate you giving that upfront and say, okay, don’t let this be about…

Diane Mayor

You can read them, but it shouldn’t be the thing that decides you, you going, I’m not like that person because I don’t like XYZ about them. I would never have their career is not a reason for it. What I do, it’s also on my website. If you take the test or anything, any of my testimonials normally have what the person’s profile is. I’ll ask them to share this episode, obviously Jacqlyn and I have talked a lot about my creator profile, her supporter profile. 

I’ve done a new different podcast episode which I’ll also link on my website where I’m talking to someone who’s a Lord. So that you can start to get a sense for actual entrepreneurs who, whether you know them or not, you can look at what their business is and how are they showing up, and does that make sense to you? And a lot of the time, you might look at their business and that doesn’t make much sense, but again, because you’re only seeing what they’re showing from a skills perspective, you don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes.  

Jaclyn Mellone

And maybe their business isn’t designed in the most optimum way for their personality or for their profile either. So how can we, is there a link to go take the assessment? What are our next steps here?  

Diane Mayor

So I will link it with, dianemayor.com forward slash Go-To Gal.

So it’s just really easy for people to find it. I’ll link that. And that’s the one that has the podcast that goes with it because obviously if we’ve got listeners to our podcast people that really kind of walks you through that if you had an hour-long call with me, that’s the first half-hour of the hour-long call where I’m explaining all these pieces that fit together and just really giving you an overview of how everything works.

Jaclyn Mellone

Amazing. All right. Thank you so, so much. So, go to that link, take the assessment. How else can we stay in touch with you, Diane?

Diane Mayor

I think Instagram is probably my best. I’m on there the most frequently. I love a DM. If you’re listening to this screen, grab it, tag us both in it. If you want to share your profile, share it, hop in DMS and tell me what your profile is.

I also have my own podcast called, Coffee and Converse where we also talk about this all the time.  

Jaclyn Mellone

Amazing. All right. Thank you so, so much. 

Diane Mayor

My pleasure. This is super fun.