Melissa Lin is a fierce online entrepreneur, and she wants other aspiring online business owners to be fierce, too. As a business coach, she founded the Fierce Business Babe brand, which assists entrepreneurs working in various fields, including online fitness.
Before starting her own business, Melissa Lin had a bustling $86k career in Chemical Engineering. However, one day, she decided to leave it all behind to run her own business and to live the lifestyle she wanted. Now, with her Fierce Business brand, Melissa runs her own thriving 6-figure business.
At Fierce Business Babe, Melissa Lin works as a “business, sales, and content expert” helping out online businesses. After getting stuck in a dreary 9-5 job, she moved on to work for herself, where she ended up making five figures for several months. She hopes she could help teach other women to do the same thing with their online businesses.
Melissa Lin says that she has already helped hundreds of women become successful online entrepreneurs, escape their 9 to 5 lives, multiply their monthly income by as much as three times, and work less to make more.
Financial independence is an important part of personal independence. Melissa Lin hopes to coach up women to achieve financial independence so that they may be able to live the lifestyles they’ve been dreaming of. If you’ve been secretly working on your personal online store while sitting in your cubicle, seek out Melissa Lin and become a Fierce Business Babe yourself.
Check out more interviews with leading online entrepreneurs here.
Jerome Knyszewski: Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
Melissa Lin: From a very young age, I was taught that in order to be successful, I needed to check these items off my bucket list: go to college, study engineering, graduate, find a successful job, and marry somebody that can also support me financially. This was all that I knew so naturally, I did as my parents and teachers advised me to do. I graduated college with my B.S. in Chemical Engineering, found a nice job with great benefits, and started to build my success story.
The trend I found in my life: as I was getting promoted, my work days grew longer, my income was barely growing, and my happiness level was shrinking. I had so many things I wanted to accomplish but didn’t see how it could happen in my lifetime. I was the girl wanting to travel 6 months out of the year, fund charities, start my own charities, and more. My dream bubble was growing bigger each minute of the day, but my 9–5 wasn’t. I knew I had to make a change if I wanted to create a different life for myself.
AND I DID THE DARN THING! I started my first business as a side-hustle while in my 9–5. I quickly grew my business to six figures and left my 9–5 to run my business full time — and yes, I was so terrified to leave a job that for 20+ years I was taught was the only way to be “safe and secure” in life. But today, I run my own multiple-6 figure business as an Online Business Coach for women ready to start, build, and scale their online businesses. I get to serve my clients while working from home, on the couch in my pajamas, or while traveling abroad to Bali and Italy.
Jerome Knyszewski: Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?
Melissa Lin: As I was starting, I had people in my life that didn’t understand my desire to start my own business. Most in my life said it was, “too risky”. They said I wouldn’t be making a smart decision by leaving my 9–5, it was “my security blanket”. From the outside, it looked like I had made it in life but deep down I knew that I wanted more. I wanted to create a bigger impact, I wanted to help more people so I started my business. It was difficult at the time, starting something that so many in my life didn’t believe was possible for me to create but deep down I knew I could create anything that I put my mind to. I grew up driven, it was a trait my parents instilled in me at a young age and the one thing that really kept me going was surrounding myself with others who understood. Joining Facebook groups, joining programs, listening to podcasts, going to live events, surrounding myself with other like-minded entrepreneurs. This showed me that if somebody else could do it, they had created evidence for me to believe that I could do it too.
Jerome Knyszewski: Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?
Melissa Lin: I laugh at this now, I thought I was going to be the best “one-woman show” in the entrepreneurial space. I told myself the story that, “I was going to be a self-made millionaire on my own, no help needed” and that was one of the biggest mistakes, thinking I could build a successful business on my own. After being a one-woman show, solopreneur for a few years, I was in constant burnout and started to understand that it’s not necessarily that I “have to” hire to continue to scale, it’s that I “get to” bring incredible people onto my team that have similar values and see the vision that I’m holding: to help women find freedom through entrepreneurship.
Jerome Knyszewski: Can you please share your “Five Things You Need To Know To Delegate Effectively and Be Completely Satisfied With the Results?” Please share a story or an example for each.
Melissa Lin: The first few items we get to delegate first typically fall into one of these two categories to help you stay in your zone of genuis:
- Things that you dislike that you’re good at
- Things that you dislike and are not good at
Administrative Work
Delegating items such as customer service, client onboarding, client offboarding, data analytics, scheduling calls. Those day to day tasks that don’t necessarily need you, the CEO to do.
Accountant/Financials
Delegating all financials and tracking so that you can be spending your time in your zone of genius. As others are doing these tasks for you, you can have reports sent to you daily/weekly so that you know exactly where your business finances stand.
Graphic Design/Website
Unless you’re a tech pro — this gets to be delegated very quickly. Website and graphic design work tend to give entrepreneurs the biggest headaches.
Social Media Management
Social media and online visibility are the future — and can be delegated! Creating content, managing your content, growing your audience, repurposing your content, and more.
Sales Team
Delegate the tasks that will also help the business generate more income. This could be a sales team, Facebook Ads Manager, Events Planner, etc.
Jerome Knyszewski: One of the obstacles to proper delegating is the oft quoted cliche “If you want something done right do it yourself.” Is this saying true? Is it false? Is there a way to reconcile it with the importance of delegating?
Melissa Lin: In my experience, this statement is false. All tasks and processes can be delegated; however it must be delegated properly. We must provide clear instruction, guidelines, trainings, resources, and feedback on the work. I’ve delegated 100+ hours of work each month to my team members who are completing tasks that in the past, I felt “only I can do this best and the way I like”. I’ve created the evidence that it’s possible for you to do so too.
Jerome Knyszewski: How can our readers further follow you online?
Melissa Lin: I can be found all over social media, here are the direct links to my website, Instagram, free Facebook group community, and Podcast with weekly episodes!
Jerome Knyszewski: This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!
