Shelley E. Kohan (00:01.307)
Hi everybody, thanks for joining our weekly podcast. I’m Shelley Cohen and I am thrilled and so excited to welcome Melissa Gonzalez to the podcast. You are principal of MG2 and I am thrilled because you are also, I’m gonna say best-selling author, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that yet, but you are author of the book, The Purpose Pivot. So welcome, Melissa.

Melissa Gonzalez (00:19.214)
thank you.

Melissa Gonzalez (00:25.718)
Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me and for being at the launch night at Crate and Barrel. It meant so much that you were there and I was just talking to somebody on my team. I’m like, FIT showed up big. Like there was like, you had a nice group, you, Reggie. I mean, so many people and it meant so much and especially too, like we’ve recruited from FIT. So like past students that work for us got to see you guys there too. It was really nice.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:55.737)
It was great and I have to say what a book launch. Like I got there a few minutes early because I just like to get to things early. So I got there a few minutes early. I’m thinking okay they’ll be like you know I hope I can get in the store and when I walked in there the place was full. Like your book launch everyone was like I can’t believe how many people came and it was fantastic. Just the showing up and of course I love Crate and Barrel and you may or may not know this but Janet Hayes

is one of my favorite all-time leaders. I’ve written about her many times and she was on Lead Like Her.

Melissa Gonzalez (01:29.822)
Oh, oh great. Yes. She really kind of her and Ken Pilot made it happen. And it was so such, I felt like the perfect backdrop for, for, you know, the association of home and closiness and wellbeing. And like, it just was the perfect setting and they were so supportive. you know, Alicia who, you know, the president of Cranberry who works with Janet’s already said like, let’s get Chicago on the calendar for.

Great and Valuable Chicago, which is really exciting.

Shelley E. Kohan (01:59.153)
That’s exciting, invite me please. So I’ll be happy to make a trip. So in your book you really bring home the ideas of like this trust in your gut, embracing slow living and personal growth. But if you don’t mind, because our listeners may not know the reason why you wrote your book, if you could just kind of tell us why you wrote your book, the pivot purpose.

Melissa Gonzalez (02:00.957)
Yes, come for sure. Yes.

Melissa Gonzalez (02:18.752)
Absolutely.

Yes. Yeah, the purpose pivot. Yes, it has the double alliteration easy to do that. So yes, so really the inspiration of me writing this book, I was like inspiration on many levels. The first was my own personal experience. And, you know, after going a year plus of my body kind of sending me signals that I wasn’t myself and increasing intensity, you know, in the beginning, it was

Shelley E. Kohan (02:24.656)
Purpose pivot.

Melissa Gonzalez (02:51.403)
you know, kind of subtle messaging. And then as we got to the end of 2023, was louder messages, right? And so much so that I wrote down on a Post-it note that I actually have here. I can keep it. It’s my reminder, I think. But it’s also in the book, but I have this Post-it note that I wrote. I was gonna do this Better You Challenge and I was gonna do it with my family.

And it was after a year of kind of like not feeling myself, increasingly fatigued, longer durations of not being able to, you know, have a bowel movement and things like that. And I’m a high energy person. So for me to like not have energy to get up is not, is definitely not me. So I wrote this down and I said, I’m going to do this challenge. We’re going to do it, you know, January 10th through the 31st. I’m going to focus on better gut health. I don’t know how I think maybe I need a cleanse and

Fast forward January 10th, I got woken up out of my sleep and excruciating pain and ended up having to be taken to the ER for this pain and I felt like I was in full blown labor. And then that turned into, know, later that day ending up in emergency surgery because my intestines had twisted 365 degrees and we’re not gonna twist back. And it was trapping my ability to, my blood flow, my, you know.

Basically, I had not, know, when you’re constipated for like a week and then that gets trapped, it’s like pretty dangerous. And they told me, you know, if that burst, you could go into septic shock, which is obviously like, could be fatal, you know, your organs can stop working and things like that. And so it was a very scary time for me across the country from my family on a business trip. But it was also this like wake up call of, you know, my body was, I knew I wasn’t myself so much. So I wrote it down on a piece of paper and

the world heard me. Like I put it out and the universe answered me on that day for exactly what I felt was not right. And I felt that I can’t ignore that, like for it to be so on the nose. And what am I going to do with that message of like, I heard it and I wasn’t really listening. And when I shared on my Instagram, I usually share like we did a store opening or we won awards or all this stuff I shared, you my year started out different.

Melissa Gonzalez (05:15.445)
I missed NREF, all the things, you know? And people said, I hope you’re okay, and I’m thinking of you, but so many also started to share their own personal stories of, you know, physical and mental well-being, things like cancer and stroke and adrenal failure and just a lot of different things that they hadn’t told other people.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:17.734)
you

Melissa Gonzalez (05:42.093)
outside of maybe their immediate family because they didn’t want people to associate them having those situations with weakness and that they couldn’t do their job and they couldn’t. And I thought this is terrible, right? This is when you need people the most. This is when you should never be embarrassed by those things and actually prioritizing them as strength, not weakness. I’m gonna have to change this message. And so I started drafting an outline and…

Shelley E. Kohan (05:56.442)
course.

Melissa Gonzalez (06:09.246)
So many women were open to sharing with me and that’s kind of, it became even more inspirational as I went down that journey and started to hear all these other stories as well.

Shelley E. Kohan (06:20.634)
That’s amazing. And the book is fantastic. I love the way it’s written. You tell the stories, you give advice, and there’s some practical examples that people actually can use, worksheets and stuff. So congratulations. I just love the book, and it came for me at a very great time in my career, but you probably hear that from everybody.

Melissa Gonzalez (06:34.55)
Thank you.

Melissa Gonzalez (06:39.852)
Well, it’s a difference. It’s different, you know, I wanted to have a lot of diversity in the book and that’s why I stuck with women because at first that’s who was sharing the most. But to be honest, since I posted on LinkedIn, which I kind of now have another realization of how different those audiences are, it’s been a lot of men who have messaged me privately. But in beginning, there’s a lot of women and I said, I want to have diversity in career paths, career trajectory. It’s a lot of like senior leaders, but in different fields, you know.

some are professional artists, some are in film and TV, a lot are in retail, because that’s my world, people in financial services. I wanted to have the opportunity where different stories are going to resonate with different people depending on where you’re at in your life and what feels relatable. And, you know, there’s different age groups within that. And so the younger age demographic that’s starting to read it.

it’s resonating with them, maybe differently, right? Because they haven’t had some of these experiences that maybe you and I are like at a different place at, but allows them maybe to get ahead of those experiences, you know? Like maybe they’ll make different choices more proactively that we didn’t make because they get to learn from women who are, you know, further along in their career path.

Shelley E. Kohan (07:33.114)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (07:51.495)
Absolutely. So I’d love to ask you some specific questions from your book. Is that all right? All right. So one of the questions is you talk about your gut kind of being your second brain. And so I want to ask you, can you think of a specific business decision where you actually went with your intuition and not so much on, you know, I know you’re a data person. So can you share a moment where you said, I know what the data is telling me, but I’m going to go this other direction.

Melissa Gonzalez (07:56.233)
Yeah, for sure.

Melissa Gonzalez (08:03.029)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Gonzalez (08:21.644)
Yeah, sometimes. mean, I’m always saying because, you know, data needs context all the time, right? So that you can be grounded in it. And a lot of the time I’m looking at quantitative data. And so that qualitative lead layer that I think where intuition kind of gets brought in. And, you know, there’s times that we’ll get data that that infer certain things are driving behavior. And I think sometimes I’ll be like, well, I think that’s maybe an outcome, but I’m not sure that that’s the why.

I don’t know if that’s the driver. And I feel like that sometimes where like the intuition might kick in, cause it’s assessing a little bit of a more from the behavioral sides of the why. And I think you need to compliment both sides of that, you know, over time, I think you just develop more of that because you’ve seen more, you’ve experienced more, you know, these triggers kind of start to kick in like, okay, when that happened last time, I know this happened last time.

It’s not that you want to have a bias, right, or ever shut down an idea because of it, but again, you’ll have these gut intuitions based on life experiences. So I think over time, you don’t want to ignore that when, or at least you might want to pause and double check it. And I write in the book about non-work related ways that I think we can all personally say, yeah, I felt that. You know, like there’s been times in my life where

I felt a little jittery that morning or like something was just off or I was like dropping things more than I should. And I was just like, my center is off right now. I don’t know. And I’m not like a superstitious person, but in those instances, things would have happened that day that were like a little off. And it was like something about me knew that something was just off, kilter. So I think, and I think also we remember negative things more than positive, unfortunately.

Shelley E. Kohan (10:15.6)
Yeah, so does our body.

Melissa Gonzalez (10:17.482)
So I think so does that right? And so some of that intuition is that our innate ability to protect ourselves too. Like this has happened before. I recognize this. Like let me pause first and like make sure I’m going down the right path or making the right decision. And you don’t want that to hinder you, but it’s good to allow yourself the ability to pause when it happens. So just again, gut check. What is that messaging saying to me? And should I be doing something with them?

Shelley E. Kohan (10:45.712)
That’s so interesting because in the past year for myself, have like in the past I never would have done this. But now exactly what you just said, I wake up on a day and something’s off. I can’t tell you what something’s off. I can’t tell you why I’m feeling the way I’m feeling. But in my ride to work or my commute, I’m thinking to myself, something’s not right with me today. I have to get centered. I have to, you know, slow down. have, so I think…

Melissa Gonzalez (11:10.622)
Mm-hmm.

Shelley E. Kohan (11:14.077)
recognizing when it’s happening and actually giving yourself a little credit for, know, saying, hey, something’s off, something’s not right. So I think that’s great to talk about it because I think women mostly, you know, I do a lot of leadership women things and I think a lot of women push it aside, push it away because we have to be strong every single day. We have to show up 100 % every single day.

Melissa Gonzalez (11:22.892)
Yeah.

Melissa Gonzalez (11:35.979)
Yes.

Melissa Gonzalez (11:40.204)
I think there’s, you the more I talk about this, the more people share things with me. So I can’t cite the exact report, but I had a friend over and he said to me, you know, I was reading this piece and it talked about as women, you know, because of what our body changes, you know, what we go through from like being a girl and getting our period and cramping and then, you know, all, you know, then you have a child maybe, and then you have paramount, and we’re constantly like dealing with stuff.

So it creates this like, can power through it kind of mentality, know, no offense to men that are watching, but that’s why we handle being sick better because we know because we’re like more used to that, you know, happening. And we said that to him, like it is, it is true, but we shouldn’t think that that’s the only way that we can wear a badge of honor, like, right. And I think that we have to change that perception even within ourselves. Like I can now say I wear a little bit of a badge of honor that I know when the tap out, I know like,

Shelley E. Kohan (12:14.758)
Yeah, it’s true.

Shelley E. Kohan (12:25.935)
Yeah.

Melissa Gonzalez (12:36.585)
you know, when this is not my place of impact, when I know I need rest and we need to embrace that, those are admirable things too, not always just powering through to say I can power through.

Shelley E. Kohan (12:52.706)
I want to follow up on something you just said. So our vice president of academic affairs at Fashion Institute of Technology was at your book launch and she’s still thanking me today for bringing her. And she just was amazed at you, your book, what you’re doing. But one of the questions she had was, you mentioned impact and you said something about tapping out because of the impact. Can you tell me a little bit about what’s this impact and

Melissa Gonzalez (13:02.097)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (13:21.872)
How do you discover your biggest impact? I think that’s the general premise of that chapter,

Melissa Gonzalez (13:26.731)
Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, there’s a lot of different ways I think that you figure that out and also embrace that it will evolve, right? Because what that looks like in the early parts of your career to the midpoint of your career to like, you know, retirement into sitting on boards or whatever you end up doing that will evolve, right? Because your life experiences will shape those things. But, you know, there’s a number of things I think that you can do. There’s those assessment tests for sure.

that I think are informative just in even your styles, right? Like those personality index tests or the Brighm Myers and stuff like that. So me taking those, you know, there’s trends in that. Like on the PI test, I’m a captain, which most people would be like, yeah. And then in the other, tend, I score really high on futurists spectrum. So I’m forward thinking, big picture. And so I’ve taken a couple of those where there’s,

constant theme in that. So my superpower isn’t necessarily being in the weeds, like in the details and the analysis of everything. I can exist in those conversations. I could do it. But it’s not my highest contribution. My highest contribution is more the pulled back, bigger picture, future forward view. And in organizations, you need mixes of those things, right? You need those tensions. You need the person who can think

five years out and you need the person who could be like, here’s where we today and here’s where optimizing where we are today too. And so if you and the people around you have a better understanding of what those things are, then you could figure out like, what are your compliments, right? And not everybody should be doing the same exact thing. And if everybody is the same composition, then I think you hinder growth too. So it’s a little bit of, I think of a learning over time. And then in the book, there’s a section called your delegation list.

Melissa Gonzalez (15:27.571)
And so some of the things you could start to test in addition to like actually taking a test is, you know, take stock of your day, of your week, of your month. What energizes you? Like if you think about the things that you’re doing in your day professionally, personally, you know, what energizes you? What gives you those dopamine fixes? So you feel super high energy in a good way. And what are the things that are like my quarters of levels, probably not where they should be. And it doesn’t like, feel, I feel depleted.

And that’s the first step that you can kind of take in those lifts. And then, and you start to look at those things that you feel depleted on, you’re like, is this something I should delegate? And if you’re not sure, then you could take the second look and say, is this my superpower? Or is it not? Right? And I think you, like I said, your superpower evolves, but if it’s not your superpower and it depletes you, then you ask again, should I delegate it? And if you’re not delegating it, then you need to ask yourself, well, do I trust?

people, like do I have trust issues? Do I not have the right team? Do I need to coach? You know, and I think as you slowly take those steps, pick one thing, right? Because one of the other prompts I did recently at a workshop and I might’ve done it that night was like, if there’s one thing you could take off your calendar with no consequences, what would that be? And think about those things because as you do it incrementally, you start to realize

Shelley E. Kohan (16:28.518)
Right.

Melissa Gonzalez (16:54.417)
what you open up space for. And you also are going to let somebody else maybe do something that they’re really good at, that really excites them. you know, my husband, you know, and we all we also work at the same firm, but he loves spreadsheets, you know, and I’ll look, I can deal with the spreadsheet, I have finance background, but like, I’m not getting excited about it, you know.

and he geeks out and I’m like, you do that spreadsheet, you know? And I love creative meetings, right? And that’s our yin and yang. But that’s how we push the group forward too because we’re bringing such different perspectives in.

Shelley E. Kohan (17:31.735)
I that. And I think you’re right. Like I take, I do strength finders. I’ve done the Myers-Briggs and a bunch of other ones and I’ve done strength finders like, I don’t know, four or five times. I get the same results every time. So I do think there’s some merit to people really understanding what their strengths are and what their skill sets are. But I want to ask you, we’re in a very fast paced environment. We are in retail. It is high pressure. It’s on 100%. It’s go, go, go.

Melissa Gonzalez (17:36.959)
Mmm.

Shelley E. Kohan (17:59.225)
and you talk a lot about the power of pause, and you talk about normalizing slow. How do we do that in our industry? How do you do, I mean, you’re leading a company, you founded a company, you sit on boards. Like, how are you, like, how does that make sense in our crazy retail industry?

Melissa Gonzalez (18:05.172)
Mm-hmm.

Melissa Gonzalez (18:14.506)
I think it is embracing the other part of the conversation, right? It’s how you’re intersecting with those things. When you sit on a board, you should have an intentional arrangement of what does your commitment look like? And that should be the lens of where am I delivering impact, right? I’m not gonna be on the phone with them every day.

You know, what does that once a quarter commitment, you know, look like if we’re gonna get a one hour call on like, what are the key items of that agenda? I mean, being really organized and intentional with your time is an important aspect of it. And I think that keeps you out of the busyness, right? Because a lot of the times you feel like if I’m fully booked, I’m busy, I’m, you know, I’m productive and I’m making impact. And then you go back to the end of the day and your to-do list, you’re like, I’ve checked off nothing.

that I said I was gonna do and it feels never ending. And so, you know, I think each time I’ve made a decision, like I’m gonna take on something. I’m gonna write a book, right? But I’m still principal at my firm, you know, and we just went through another acquisition and I have a, you know, pretty significant like major project I’m working on through that with them. And so I’ve had to have very intentional conversations with leadership and my peers and say like,

This is what’s happening, know, where’s most important for my time to be. We have other leadership, what should sit on their plate now, you know, and you’re going to have to have like those active dialogues too and be okay with it. And it’s not always easy. Like I step out of things sometimes and I get FOMO, you know, I’m like, Ooh, I’m not invited to that meeting anymore. Like, what are they talking about? And then I have to say to myself, you don’t need to know. You can get the summary.

Right? It doesn’t mean that like I’m iced out or any of those things. This is just like what I’m evolving to, what I’m shifting to. And I think you just, it’s it’s a practice really, right? Because I’m not going to say you just flip the switch and you’re just like, I don’t care about those things anymore. And you just out of it. But I’m trying to remind myself if I don’t do that, A, they don’t get to do the role they got brought in for. And B, I don’t get to do these other things that I’m really excited and want to be able to grow into.

Melissa Gonzalez (20:38.546)
And so the last part of the book, I do talk about that parallel path of growth and shedding. And those two things kind of have to coexist in order for you to grow.

Shelley E. Kohan (20:49.894)
I love that. I have to say, you know, in reading your book, you can really feel it’s such a genuine journey. And you read these people’s stories, you read your story, and it’s just really heartfelt. And I do think the whole idea of being transparent is sometimes difficult, as you mentioned, being able to come out and say, hey, look, I can’t be everywhere. You know, so being this

Being transparent about where you’re at, where you can be, I think that’s great. I think it’s important for us to be more transparent. So you also mentioned in your book being where you’re supposed to be. Tell me, what is that?

Melissa Gonzalez (21:32.01)
Yeah, I think that kind of goes into that whole world of FOMO and like, you know, we’re on socials and you you look at mine this week, launch week, right? It probably looks like I have like the most amazing life or whatever. But you know, a lot of work went into that and not everything worked out perfectly along that process. And you know, there are things that are moving targets all the time when you launch a book and you’re having a book tour and all those things. And I’m not sharing every single one of those, right? I’m sharing like

the successes more so. But I think it’s remembering that, you know, there’s gonna be a little give and take in those things. And tell me exactly the question again.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:13.615)
Just being where you’re supposed to be. Yeah.

Melissa Gonzalez (22:15.505)
yes, yes. So, for example, you know, there was one big, big like national media thing that I was like, that’ll happen on launch day, you know? And I had great media, but not this one, for example. And when I first got the email, like, hey, it’s just not gonna work out, are you open to another time? Like I felt so like crushed in the moment. And then I stopped and I reminded myself.

the success of this launch, the success of this journey, the success of the bigger picture I want this to be, which is the messaging of it, is not contingent on if I was on that day on that one show. And so it could feel like this catastrophic thing that happens, but I was like, this is just not the timing for it. Maybe it’s gonna happen next month, or maybe I’m gonna end up on another show, or maybe something else, you know, and it’s just having like faith in that, you know?

that it’s very unlikely that one thing that doesn’t work out exactly the way you saw it is going to make or break the success of the bigger picture goal that you have at that time.

Shelley E. Kohan (23:26.713)
I think that’s great. And I also love at the end of the book, not to give away everything in your book, but I love, cause you mentioned it, I’m gonna bring it up, the shedding piece. I mean, to me, like when you talk about, you know, shedding, and of course I think of my Tomaskin dog who sheds, you know, it’s a lab Tomaskin and shedding all the time. And I think about, wouldn’t it be great just to shed off the things that we don’t need? It’s so important. And I don’t think we spend enough time thinking about that continually over time.

Melissa Gonzalez (23:55.656)
Well, I don’t think we, I think we don’t think about it. And I think that it’s really hard to embrace that it’s a healthy thing to do. in that chapter, I talk about different levels, right? There’s different levels of shedding. There’s like decluttering, right? That’s like more basic level of like materialistic things. Like we all need to declutter our closet or, you know, your calendar is another level, right? Like.

you can start looking at those things. And then there’s relationships and then there’s, and there’s different things. And it doesn’t mean that those things didn’t have importance at one point. It doesn’t mean you can’t honor the role they had when at those times that it made a lot of sense. but yeah, it’s kind of taking that self care view of if I don’t do these things, is that what cost that I don’t allow myself to get to something else.

Shelley E. Kohan (24:49.477)
Melissa, it has been an absolute pleasure. Are there any closing thoughts that you’d like to share with our listeners?

Melissa Gonzalez (24:56.553)
Well, I hope that, you know, there’s a story or two that resonates. You know, as you mentioned, Shelly, it’s not just my story. It’s dozens of women who trusted me enough to share their stories, many of them for the first time. And the hope is just you find a story or two that resonates with you and you find a lesson or two that you can, you know, start to embrace a bit and and you share it with somebody else. And really, I just hope that

It helps people embrace the mindset that through vulnerability and intuition, you do open a lot of possibilities for yourself and that your wellbeing should not be a side project on your path to leadership or throughout your career growth.

Shelley E. Kohan (25:45.413)
I love that Melissa, and I’m gonna end with something I wanna do that you probably won’t do, and that is encourage everyone to go out and buy The Purpose Pivot. Run, Don’t Walk. It’s an amazing book and it’s an amazing journey. So thank you, Melissa. Thanks for being here.

Melissa Gonzalez (25:50.567)
Okay?

Melissa Gonzalez (26:02.419)
Thank you so much for having me.