Client story: How your Natural Advantage® shows you your top one strength
How your natural advantage shows you your top one strength
Melinda is the owner of Makeovers by Melinda in Southampton in the UK and is a Make-up artist and Hairstylist with 30+ years experience in the beauty industry. She offers mobile hair and make-up services for weddings and special occasions to help you look and feel radiant at your special event. She has a Makeover Studio at home where she teaches make-up lessons online and offline. She also teaches how to use skincare and essential oils to help you take care of yourself. Melinda’s motto is: be beautiful, be well, be uniquely you.
When Melinda started the coaching program, she wanted to find better ways to connect with previous customers and to generate future business but she felt barriers to get the work done that needed to get done. She wanted to find alternative techniques to the ones she was using so that she could feel confident and excited to take on the projects she chose.
In a private 1-1 coaching program, Melinda’s discovered that her Natural Habit Style is the Painter’s Palette and that having fun & flexibility in her work is essential for her to be at her best. When Melinda works with her Natural Advantage®, she naturally excels at finding the best option for her clients so that they can feel radiant, confident, and good inside.
Why can't I do it their way?
"It felt like why can't I do it their way? Why can't I just get it together and sort myself out and do everything strategically, even though I know I'm not a strategic person. When you feel like everyone else seems to be able to do it all and you can't, it just makes you feel a bit like a failure."
Doubts
"I had doubts if the program was right for me mainly because I had quite a few options. So I was trying to work out which one was the best option for me and for the next steps to take me forward. The doubts were obviously spending money as well because I wanted to make sure it was a good investment."
Exploration call
"I got to know Mariella through her posts and emails and I'd watched some of her Masterclasses as well. I just liked the way she came across and her gentle nature. I could tell that she was good at listening as well."
"She could take the words and then say them back in the ‘right way’. I found that was helpful, even in the first session that we did to get to know each other a bit (Melinda is referring to the free exploration call before the program). I felt a connection with her and I thought she was someone I wanted to spend time with."
Looking forward to the sessions
"I looked forward to the coaching sessions and we explored different areas that I wouldn't have thought to explore. When I say things out loud sometimes it makes more sense. But I don't normally talk to myself out loud so it's all internal otherwise. I'm not very good at writing things down in a journal. The coaching sessions were almost like an intense sit down and just talk from your heart kind of thing."
"I've done some group coaching, challenges and various things but having that 1-1 contact where someone is actually really interested in you as a person and trying to help you understand yourself, I think it’s really valuable. It was almost knowing that someone was rooting for you as well and just wanting you to improve and get to the goals that you're trying to achieve. Yeah, that was helpful."
An eye opener
"When we did the natural advantage discovery, that was quite an eye opener. When we were talking about the difference between me and my husband as well, I found that really helpful because it cemented what I thought I knew. It was good in all different ways really."
I just have to do it my way
"I've been beating myself up for years because I think I don't do things the way that my husband does them or the way other people do them. When Mariella showed me the loop thing (organic working style), I was like: Right, okay, that makes much more sense!’ Now I can understand. I'm not like my husband in his way of organizing things and I'm not like other people in the way they organize things. I know I just have to do it my way and in my own time."
"I've been kinder to myself. For instance, when I have client conversations in messaging, sometimes I feel like I'm wasting my time because I should have done something else or could have been doing something else. But now I know I'm building a relationship with this person and it's like having a conversation with them. It's valuable and worthy of my time. Like Mariella says: When it's what you naturally do, you don't realize it's a skill and you think everyone else can do it. "
There's nothing wrong with me
"The coaching taught me to forgive myself and give myself grace to not be annoyed because I'm not doing it the way that other people do it. To understand that I'm doing it my way and that just felt like a relief. It was a relief because I felt that it's okay. I'm still okay. There's nothing wrong with me."
More confidence
"I definitely feel like I know myself better and I feel more confident. I'm not really putting myself out there so much on social media in that aspect but I just feel more confident in what I'm doing for my ladies is helping them (Melinda’s clients)."
"If I compare the level of confidence in myself before I started working with Mariella compared to now? If 1 is really bad and 5 is really good, before I was probably a 2. Where it's going round and round in your head, but you're not getting any further forward. Now, I’d probably say I’m a 4. I'm not quite where I want to be, but I'm on the right track."
Building a team and getting more sales
"There's definitely been some sort of shift, I'd say. I’ve been trying to find the right people to help me with different tasks that I want to achieve. Now I found someone to help me with my organization and she's also volunteered to do a few other things to help me as well. Someone else is helping me with my emails. It's actually been really good because she wants to learn more about Mailerlite (an email system that Melinda’s using). So she's going to help me and I'm going to help her learn. It's moved me forward in that respect.
"For my brides, I try to make things to suit the individual person. Since knowing that that’s part of my natural advantage, it’s made me more confident when I do the make-up lessons. Maybe that’s why people are spending more money on buying products."
Intuitive coaching
"Part of Mariella’s specialness is her intuitiveness. She’s such a good listener. It's really good when she says: I'm hearing you say this and then she speaks it back to me. Or when she says: Okay, now we've done this, we could do that. I think that's a skill in itself. She helps people by listening and understanding and then leading them to the next step."
"Mariella’s very easy to speak to. I feel like I can open up to her and not be judged. Because there's things that I've shared with her which I haven't shared with anyone probably ever. It has been a little bit like therapy as well. Sometimes speaking thoughts out loud gets them out of your body and your head. But if you haven't got that person that you can say those things to then it's always inside."
That top one strength
"I would definitely recommend Mariella, especially if you are an introverted person as well and you want to move forward with your business. I've done the work on the Clifton Strengths Finder and Human Design because I've been on this journey of finding out about myself. I had quite a lot of background information and I wasn't sure whether Mariella was going to tell me anything new."
"Learning about my natural advantage was an eye opener. It gave me confidence to be able to know my top strength. Because it is that top one, isn't it? My natural advantage is the one that covers everything."
Melinda took part in the private 1-1 coaching program. Read more about private coaching here.
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About the author
Mariella Franker, PhD is a former scientific writer and an introvert. She teaches introverts who work from home how to create healthy habits so that they have more energy & improve focus without habits that feel forced or only last 2 weeks.
She's a certified Natural Advantage® coach, associate coach at De Succesvolle Introvert, and founder at The Franker Message. She has been featured in places such as Cheeky Scientist, Quiet and Strong podcast, and MarieTV.
A first generation immigrant from South America, she now lives in the Netherlands with her husband and son. On most days, you'll find her working in her little office cabin or puttering around her home or garden.
