Melanie Borden shares her real journey of building a standout presence on LinkedIn, plus how embracing honesty, personality, and consistency helped her turn visibility into real business growth.
Check Out These Highlights:
Melanie Borden didn’t grow her brand by playing it safe, and that’s exactly why people pay attention. In this episode, she shares how she carved out her space on LinkedIn by showing up with honesty, personality, and a willingness to be seen beyond the highlight reel.
We talk about what it actually looks like to build visibility from the ground up, including the mindset shifts that come with putting yourself out there, the pressure to “perform” online, and how Melanie learned to trust her voice instead of following someone else’s formula.
Melanie also breaks down her approach to content; why real, human posts outperform overly polished ones, how she creates connection through storytelling, and what consistency really looks like behind the scenes. If you’ve been holding back from showing up fully online, this conversation will challenge you to rethink what authenticity actually looks like in your brand.
About Melanie Borden:
Melanie Borden is a LinkedIn strategist and personal branding expert known for helping entrepreneurs and professionals grow bold, authentic brands that stand out. She’s built her presence by blending strategy with personality, showing others how to turn visibility into meaningful connections and opportunities.
Connect with Melanie:
🌐 Website: www.humantobrand.com
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanieborden/
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/humantobrand/
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Toby Myles: Hey, Melanie. Welcome to the podcast.
Melanie Borden: Thanks for having me.
Toby Myles: I'm excited for this conversation. So I usually kick things off by telling people how we know each other, and I'm pretty sure it was Caroline Pennington who- Yeah ... introduced us. So she is... She and I have had a few, um, common guests on our shows.
She's an amazing podcaster. She was on my podcast in the very early stages, and she was so gracious with me. She had a bazillion episodes of experience, but she was so gracious with me and encouraging, um, me to keep going, and she had a few l- few little tips here and there for me. So I always appreciate when women who I'm inspired by introduce me to other amazing women, and that's how we ended up here today.
So I would love for you to take me back to a moment in time, um, or maybe it's, like, more than one moment in time that you feel like really kind of, like, put you on the path that you're on right now.
Melanie Borden: So in 2019, it was February, and you know what's interesting about this question is I'm building my keynote talk right now, and I've interweaved this into my keynote, and over the last couple of weeks I've been really thinking about these stories that kind of shape who I am and how I got started.
So if I had to pinpoint, in February of 2019, I had just been at a new job for a year. I was working in automotive retail. So I worked in the car business for almost all of my career until 2021. But in 2019, I was a year into this new job that I had. I oversaw all the marketing and the advertising for a six-store dealer group.
Um, highline, so all luxury brands: Lexus, BMW, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, Alfa Romeo. And I worked for an entrepreneur who owned those businesses, as well as other businesses, including commercial real estate, as well as a coffee shop, and he had his o- his own radio show and his own personal brand. And I had two very young children at the time.
They were super small. They were in daycare. Mm-hmm. I was working retail hours, so I was getting to the office around 8:00 in the morning. I was leaving around 6:00 or 7:00, depending on the day. Late picking my kids up, late dropping them off. I was pretty much on what they would say the hot mess express.
And at the time I was also- About a year or so, probably a year and a half, I had already, I had just been divorced, and I was totally broke, and I was completely stressed out. And though, although on paper I had this great job, I was totally overwhelmed with everything. And I just remember this one moment when I was sitting in my house, I was sitting on my basement floor because I didn't have enough oil, and it was really the first time that I've ever had to be responsible for heating my own home.
Toby Myles: Right.
Melanie Borden: And of course I was not prepared. Living in, you know, New York City and living in Hoboken for years, you know, you don't think about things like that. Mm-hmm. You just think about, oh, we're turning on the air or we're turning on the heat. And I remember sitting there thinking, I have to change something in my life because this is not the direction I wanna go, and I don't wanna feel like this.
I don't wanna be like this, and this is not who I am, and I need to figure this out, and I need to figure out what I'm gonna do next. And in that moment, I realized what I had done in my position, and I had been saving the company millions of dollars. I was helping create an in- ... I actually created, didn't help create it, I created an in-house agency for where I was working, and I realized that I was up for a promotion.
So that night I went online, I started doing some research. I stayed up until probably 2:00 in the morning working on a document with everything that I achieved and accomplished, finding comp salaries, finding positions that I thought were in line, and that week I was promoted to vice president of marketing.
And it was really in that moment when I made this decision, I made this mindset shift that things had to change. And when that happened, when I was promoted, the CEO said to me, "So did you write your press release yet?" And I hadn't even thought about a press release. And of course I said, "Yes. Yes, I have."
Mm-hmm. Yeah. "Sent it
Toby Myles: to you." Of course. Of
Melanie Borden: course I wrote it. And he said to me, "Okay, great." And that's when I really realized that I wasn't tapping into really marketing and promoting myself. And that press release that I had put out opened up this whole new world for me of opportunity because all of a sudden, articles were talking about the promotion that I had in the industry, outside the industry.
Then all of a sudden, podcast hosts started reaching out to me that were in the industry wanting me to come on. And so this other layer of visibility started happening.
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm.
Melanie Borden: And I wasn't 100% ready for it because you just don't get ready. You just do it, and it just happens to you.
Toby Myles: Yeah.
Melanie Borden: And there was only so much preparation.
So I started going on podcasts, and I started writing articles. I started working on my own PR. I started working as a contributing writer for a couple trade publications in the industry- Mm-hmm ... in 2019. And at the end of 2019, I was trying to think of ways that I could bring more value to the organization that I was working for, and I thought to myself, "What if we focused on personal brands?
What if there's a way that we can leverage all of the salespeople that are working in the company?" There was 80-plus salespeople in the business office, and I thought, "What if we were able to leverage their personal brands, plus all the money that we're spending in marketing and advertising? And we would create this wave of visibility through these individuals who ultimately would be able to market and promote themselves too."
Mm-hmm. And I wanted to focus on LinkedIn because I kept seeing people on LinkedIn. I wasn't as active. I would kind of post things about what the company was doing very rarely. Like, maybe once every couple months I would post something about what the company I was doing was working on, et cetera, and what my CEO was doing.
And then I decided to develop a training for all the salespeople on how to leverage their personal brand in 2020. Mm-hmm. Okay? This is right before the pandemic
Toby Myles: happened. Mm-hmm.
Melanie Borden: And so I started slowly doing this myself because I wanted to lead by example, and that's exactly when the pandemic happened, and the entire organization was pretty much laid off except for, like, 25 of us.
Toby Myles: Wow. I
Melanie Borden: was fortunate to not be laid off, but it really freaked me out. And in that moment I realized I had spent all this time in my career working in marketing, working in sales and business development, and helping build other people's companies, and I never focused on building myself.
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm.
Melanie Borden: And so I just decided to lean into LinkedIn, and I became obsessed with it, and I became...
I would spend hours, every waking hour that I wasn't, you know, parenting with my kids, at the kitchen table, you know, during working hours- Mm-hmm ... and the time that I wasn't commuting, pretty much my hobby became my personal brand and how do I promote myself, how do I create a name for myself as fast as possible?
Because what if I am laid off, and then I'm back into that situation where, oh my God, I'm sitting on my basement floor thinking about it. Mm-hmm. So it was really driven a lot by fear for me. Mm-hmm. Fear of failure, you know, fear of loss, you know, fear of not having anything and having to go through that same thing again.
Toby Myles: Yeah. And
Melanie Borden: what happened after the pandemic happened, that timeline, during 2020, I built this audience on LinkedIn where people started following me and I was posting about marketing tips, my day-to-day working in marketing, the podcast that I was going on. I was networking, I was speaking at virtual events.
By the way, before the pandemic, I hadn't done much of any of that.
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm.
Melanie Borden: But the pandemic really had started that for me because it was never... The companies I had always worked for, there was never really a solid track for women in any of the organizations- Yeah ... to become a speaker.
Toby Myles: Yeah.
Melanie Borden: You know, how do you do all these different things?
How do you present yourself on a podcast? Mm. What are the things that you talk about? None of that was ever discussed anywhere that I had ever worked. Mm-hmm. And I wasn't leveraging the internet the same way that I am now, 'cause I just, I didn't have those tools and those skills that a lot of people today inherently have just because they've been born into it.
Toby Myles: Yeah.
Melanie Borden: And so one thing led to another. I ended up getting another job working as a VP of marketing for a tech company, and what started happening was people would start coming to me on LinkedIn and saying, "I want you to do for, for me what you did for yourself."
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm. And I
Melanie Borden: had to say no, because I was working for someone else.
Toby Myles: Yeah.
Melanie Borden: And it was just this constant flow of people coming to me, and then after about, I want to say, four months of being at that company, I quit.
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm.
Melanie Borden: And I decided to start my own business with zero business plan. No idea-
Toby Myles: Of course, why not? It was
Melanie Borden: very scary. Why not? Might as well. I just really had this faith and belief that this was going to lead to something that was going to be life-changing for me, and I just felt it in my gut.
And yes, totally terrifying, absolutely. Mm-hmm. You know, having two kids, having a mortgage, all the things. It freaked me out, but I knew that if I had to rely on myself that I would be okay.
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm. And
Melanie Borden: that's really how I started.
Toby Myles: That's amazing. I, I j- there's so much about that that I wanna dig into. Um, so you have a huge following on LinkedIn.
Huge. I
Melanie Borden: can.
Toby Myles: And, um, I know it didn't happen overnight. Um, but I, I would love for you to, like, talk a little bit about the whole personal branding piece, right? Because, like, you built that while you were working for someone else, and I think that people can be confused by, like, a company's brand and your personal brand, and why both are necessary.
Can you talk about that a little bit?
Melanie Borden: Yeah, absolutely. And I will also kind of, uh, put a little disclaimer on it that not every company was as cool as the company that I had worked for, where they were completely, um, modern in their way of thinking, where they knew that anything that I was doing and any way that I presented myself was going to be a positive impact on their business.
Mm-hmm. And not every business feels that way.
Toby Myles: Yeah.
Melanie Borden: Um, and there is a lot that don't. But, you know, the balance itself with, with LinkedIn, with getting started with all of it, I mean, a l- a lot of what you see today is just the end result of an obsession. I mean, I became obsessed with it.
Toby Myles: Let's just be real about it.
Melanie Borden: I mean, I'm just being honest. Yeah. I was, I was obsessed.
Toby Myles: Yeah. I
Melanie Borden: mean, probably someone could say it was unhealthy. Mm-hmm. But I did turn it into a business, so there is, you know, that silver lining. Yeah. But I would say the biggest differentiator is, whether or not we want to admit this, if we work for someone else, no matter how long you've worked for that company, and you might have the best relationship with them, they may refer to you as family, which I have thoughts on as well.
Mm-hmm. They may say, you know, "You're safe here," and this is the place that you feel comfortable. At the end of the day, you only have yourself to look out for, and y- there's a way where you can grow your career and you can grow yourself, and it will still positively impact the company, but they're two separate things.
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm.
Melanie Borden: Company brand is the company that you work for. That's, you know, the, the place that of, of employment. Um, you are essentially an extension of that, but it doesn't make up who you are. Yeah. And that's something that I've really had to kind of unwind in myself because I am not my company. I am and I'm not.
Mm-hmm. But a lot of times in the past I've kind of blurred those lines because, you know, it's my baby and I love it. Yeah. And there's a lot of founders that are like me in that sense too, where they feel ultra passionate about what they've built, whether it's a product or a company, um, or a community or, or whatever it is.
But-
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm ...
Melanie Borden: the, the personal brand piece is essentially who, who are you in your career? That's what I look as what's your personal brand. Mm-hmm. When it comes to your LinkedIn, that's what... It's your career, it's, it's everything. But it's more than that too, because you're also a person.
Toby Myles: Yeah.
Melanie Borden: You know, B2B is really a, a, I would say the audience that you will find on LinkedIn.
Mm-hmm. And I tell this to people all the time, that yes, it is B2B, but it's also H2H. These companies have people that are working for them. Yeah. So you think about like the company as the organization and the individuals as those humans. Mm-hmm. You wanna have your own lane. You wanna be known for who you are, the results that you've brought.
You wanna make sure that in case of an emergency, you don't wanna be stuck in a place like I was watching, you know, millions of people around you get laid off and not know- Yeah ... what to do. Yeah. It's really a safety net. Yeah. A personal brand is your safety net. It's essentially who you are, just transferred online.
Yeah. That's, to me, that's what it is. But it's also the essence, the colors that you wear when you walk in a room. Mm-hmm. What someone sees and what, when they think of you, what do they think of? Um, w- what, what, how do you make them feel? Yeah. I mean, those are all part of your personal brand. And LinkedIn is just, to me, is just one of the anchors in someone's career that will help them with getting to where they want to be.
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So even if... I mean, so it goes, it works in both, um, scenarios, whether you're a founder of a business or you're working for someone else. Like those, like how you show up, how you present yourself, what are your core values, um, that human aspect like you talk about, which I feel like is so important.
Um, I am on LinkedIn every day. Um, and- Good ... I, sometimes I'm just like Sorry LinkedIn world who's listening, but sometimes I'm just bored to tears. Like, I want you to tell me something interesting about yourself. Like, I know you wanna tell me what you do and how you can help me or whoever, but I also, like, I'm here for the stories.
I wanna know about you as a person, what you stand for. Give me a peek into, like, your life outside of work, right? Um, yeah, and so I love that, that whole idea of, um, of personal branding, right? It's gonna serve you everywhere in your career, whether you're working for someone or starting your own thing. Um, I mean, I've...
Even on your, um, Instagram, like, I know you're, you're passionate about dogs, and I see a lot of that. And so it's very clear, like, you're a dog person, so right away I'm like, "Oh, I, I connect with that." Like, I love animals too, and that would r- automatically make me think, like, "Well, you have something in common."
Like, you're a certain type of person that loves animals and will, like, volunteer for animal stuff, so it also means you're a good human, right? And so I think, like, there's kinda sometimes these unspoken things that come out of, like, showing those personal sides of us.
Melanie Borden: Yeah, definitely. And it's funny, you know, people will say to me, because I recently rescued...
Last year, uh, we rescued a dog from Puerto Rico.
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm. And
Melanie Borden: she's so cute, and, um, she's my chief happiness officer. I'm sure you've heard of her.
Toby Myles: Love that.
Melanie Borden: I haven't posted about her in a while on LinkedIn, but before her, I had a head of public relations. And you know, I, I'm showing that I'm a real person.
Mm-hmm. And everyone's trying to figure out, how do I not sound like AI, whether it's on Instagram or LinkedIn? Well- Mm-hmm ... you do it by sharing who you are.
Toby Myles: Yeah.
Melanie Borden: And sharing that side of you, because, you know, a faceless brand to me, you can do it. There are plenty of faceless brands, but think about how much more impactful someone could be on someone else if they showed their face and told their story- Yeah
which I know you firmly believe in.
Toby Myles: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think, um, I just commented on somebody, somebody was talking about AI and how, um, you know, it's not just that you can now, like, really tell when people are using AI to write their posts. It's, it's, it's, it goes beyond, like, certain AI tells and formatting and the dreaded em dash and all the things you read about.
It's, it's more like people are not thinking for themselves. They're not expressing, like, their personal point of view on things, you know? And I feel like it's, it's just very bland, and honestly, I think it's lazy. Like- Add something thoughtful, you know, to, to LinkedIn, anywhere you show up online, whether you're posting or whether you're commenting on someone else's stuff.
I don't know. I, I'm just like, I think that's one of the reasons why I get bored so easily, um, is, you know, and then I end up getting in these conversations where someone says, "How do you drink your coffee? Do you like it with cream or do you like it black?" You know? And to me it's like, "Oh, this is such a cool conversation.
I love it." Yeah.
Melanie Borden: Well, you know, it's... And the AI conversation is very interesting because a lot of times the people that I'm dealing with feel that they missed the boat.
Toby Myles: Mm.
Melanie Borden: Just there's a lot of people who think it's too late to start a podcast. Mm-hmm. It's too late to be on Instagram. Mm-hmm. It's too late to be on LinkedIn.
So I think in effort to offset that, what they do is they just leverage AI and volume. Mm. And then what, in essence, what you're doing is you're taking away the piece that makes having an online voice so powerful, is you're just allowing a machine to do it for you.
Toby Myles: Yeah. You
Melanie Borden: could just, you could share those stories about what happened, about what makes you think, about what you learned, and all the things that people find to be interesting.
Because it doesn't matter the platform that anyone's on online, it could be LinkedIn, it could be YouTube, it could be Instagram, it could be TikTok. Mm-hmm. Stories are the really... what keeps people interested and will have people paying attention.
Toby Myles: Yeah. Paying attention and remembering you.
Melanie Borden: Right.
Toby Myles: So I started my, um...
I have a community called Her Story Authority, and in there there's a course that's called The Core Eight Story Hub, and it's the eight essential stories that I think every founder needs, including origin story, brand story, behind the scenes, you know, times you struggled. Like, all those things that all of us have gone through.
And the biggest, um, hurdle people have is kind of they feel uncomfortable. You know? They feel like, "This is personal, I'm not sure if I wanna share it." Which I think is fine. I think we all have our own threshold for what we're willing to share and what we're not willing to share, and how we share it, right?
Are you sharing it just for sympathy and, and likes and whatever? Or are you sharing it because you think maybe it will connect with someone and it might help someone else, you know? And so that's one of the things that we talk about a lot inside the community, is like you, each person has to feel comfortable with what they're sharing.
But just know that people want more of that. They want to connect with you in a way that, uh, that... where they feel like they know you.
Melanie Borden: Yeah. That's so true. You know what I've seen a lot of are people wait. They wait because they're thinking about what others think of them.
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm. And
Melanie Borden: they're afraid of how they're going to be perceived, and they're putting it all on them.
Toby Myles: Yeah.
Melanie Borden: Just like with speaking, when you make it about the audience versus about yourself, and you make- Mm-hmm ... it where it's you're serving others. Yeah. It's a complete mindset shift, and then all of a sudden you take away the pressure that's put on you when- Yep ... you figure out, "I'm, I need to reach this goal, and for me to reach this goal, I'm gonna share this story or I'm gonna post about this particular thing, and that's gonna help that person on the other side," versus, "I'm posting about myself.
I feel insecure. No one wants to read this. Who's gonna read this? Why would I write this?" Mm-hmm. "I'm gonna piss somebody off on my team. My board's not gonna like it. I'm gonna have an investor potentially not invest in me because of that," and all these crazy concoctions that we come up with, but people aren't thinking about us as much as we're thinking about ourselves, and that's-
Toby Myles: Yeah.
Yeah, for sure. So, um, and I feel like that's the kind of the, um, theme behind your book, right? Theater of the Mind?
Melanie Borden: Yes.
Toby Myles: Um, that you talk about that fear, um, that people have and that fear with visibility. So can you talk about that book, your book a little bit?
Melanie Borden: Absolutely. So Theater of the Mind, the name Theater of the Mind actually worked when I was working in automotive retail, and the term itself is coined from the 1930s from radio.
Okay. So the first podcasts that were out there, um, when people used to have to sit and listen to the Western or the drama, and they'd have to imagine it being played out.
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm. When
Melanie Borden: I started doing this work, when I left my job and I started my business, I started noticing this common thread, which is all the stories that we tell ourselves, and I would be experiencing this myself.
Mm-hmm. I would see clients experiencing it, and it's almost this com- this theatrical performance that's being put on that isn't necessarily even what's happening.
Toby Myles: Hmm.
Melanie Borden: And so when you're dealing with a team of people, let's say there's five or six people on an executive team, and everyone is looking to be posting on LinkedIn because they're launching a product in Q3, and they want everyone out there, and they wanna create a wave of visibility so that way they do have faces to their brand, um, and half of the team isn't comfortable with it because- Hmm
someone is nervous about what a potential investor might think, or they're not sure if it sounds okay, or they get paralysis by analysis. It's just this, this common theme that I started seeing over and over and over again in the work that I do, and that's really what started the book, and it's essentially- Um, well, how could I put this?
It is my love letter, love book I should say, to the world about not only the work that I've done, but also my own experiences with it, because I do think that going first and sharing what you do experience will be impactful for others around you. Yeah. And you know, I, until I wrote the book and I was doing research about imposter syndrome, I didn't think imposter syndrome was a real thing.
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm.
Melanie Borden: I think imposter syndrome was a made-up term to make women feel bad.
Toby Myles: Mm. Okay. Yeah.
Melanie Borden: That's initially what I thought it was- Yeah ... until I started writing this book and I started experiencing it myself.
Toby Myles: Yeah.
Melanie Borden: It was almost as if I forgot everything that I had achieved, and I second-guessed everything, and I was just rewriting and rewriting and editing and scrapping drafts, and going through the same experience that my clients go through- Mm-hmm
when they're going to market with their brand.
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm. A different
Melanie Borden: medium for me, it was the book, but it was still, to me it was relatable from the lens of experiencing im- imposter syndrome.
Toby Myles: Mm. That's so interesting.
Melanie Borden: Uh-huh. It's a full circle moment.
Toby Myles: So okay. So then let's talk about that a little bit, like- Yeah
because I believe it's a real thing, and- I do too ... I find ways of pushing through it, you know? Eventually I just get to the point where I'm like, "I don't care. I'm doing it." I did that with this podcast, which is almost a year old already. But for years I talked myself out of it. I said, "My God, who am I to do this?
Who n- the world doesn't need another podcast," right? But this something kept, like, pulling me towards having these conversations with women. I was fascinated by, like, how, how did you get here? Like, to me that was just fascinating. And so I just, I had a coach tell me, like, it doesn't have to be anything, just start talking to women, retor- recording conversations, and if it turns into a podcast, great.
If not, it satisfies your own cur- curiosity. And so I finally got over that hump by just pushing forward and actually doing the thing, even feeling like an imposter. So but I would love your take on that, having gone through it after thinking it wasn't a real thing. Like, how do you push through it, and then how do you, um, coach your clients to push through it too?
Melanie Borden: Yeah, I mean, it was very challenging for me. When I first started writing my book everything was very clear, you know, everything felt very clear in my business, in my life, um, everything. The book, it felt like it was just a natural progression. Mm-hmm. I went through the book-writing process for 18 months.
The first draft I wrote in six months, I hated it, scrapped it.
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm.
Melanie Borden: The second draft I had a ghostwriter help me. Hated it, scrapped it. Then the third draft I felt really great about, and then I started experiencing some life things and, like, my grandmother passed away and my dog died in the same week.
Toby Myles: Oh, my gosh.
Melanie Borden: And it was all while I was writing the book, and it was like, I just wanna stop writing this book. I don't wanna do this anymore. This is not what I wanna do. I already feel all the weight of kind of waiting to be ready.
Toby Myles: Mm.
Melanie Borden: And, you know, I felt that I was delaying it because I needed m- more clarity on the book and what it had to be about.
Mm-hmm. But I had the answers, I just had to take action.
Toby Myles: Yeah. That's
Melanie Borden: really the key, is that the clarity doesn't come from not doing it. Right. It comes from doing it. You have to just- Yeah ... do it, and I think that's the biggest lesson for a lot of women, and men-
Toby Myles: Yeah ...
Melanie Borden: to be honest. I mean, it's not just women that go through this, it's men too.
And I think it's, you have to... Y- the thing isn't gonna happen, you have to happen. Yeah. And then the thing happens as a result of you doing it.
Toby Myles: Yeah.
Melanie Borden: And just kind of moving through it. And- Yeah ... the messiness is really- Mm-hmm ... the part that a lot of people don't wanna show. I mean, when I'm working with someone, they're generally very experienced in their field.
Whatever... I work across many different industries, and one of the things that I will tell you that they don't, what they don't necessarily have, is the clarity of how it, it's going to look and what the end result is.
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm.
Melanie Borden: And you're not gonna know the end result until you start.
Toby Myles: Yeah.
Melanie Borden: And, and that's really the key thing, is you...
I help them take what they already know and make them visible, and help them with connecting those dots so they're trusted- Mm-hmm ... and so they're seen, and create authority that will drive opportunities for them.
Toby Myles: Yeah.
Melanie Borden: But you're not gonna know what, what's gonna happen until you do it. You don't know what opportunities are gonna present themselves.
We can guess.
Toby Myles: Right.
Melanie Borden: Look at data and we can see what others in similar fields and similar roles, what has happened with them. Mm-hmm.
Toby Myles: But
Melanie Borden: you don't know who's gonna relate to you. You don't know who's gonna be in the right place at the right time at the right moment who needs you right now.
Toby Myles: Yeah. For sure.
Melanie Borden: And so that's really, I think, the biggest takeaway, is no matter what, you gotta just keep going, one foot in front of the other. Mm-hmm. Like, one day at a time. Mm-hmm. You just gotta keep pushing.
Toby Myles: Yeah, for sure. I think that, um, that idea of just- trusting and, and taking that first step, and then another and another.
It seems so basic, but I think, like, it really is- Right ... true. Not just, like, with writing a book, but with, like, starting your business, you know? I think that, um, um, you talk about, y- you posted on social media about reinvention, reinvention and what it looks like, you know, starting over, starting from scratch.
Sometimes people think, "Oh, well you had it all figured out before you started over." Like, heck no. It's been
Melanie Borden: a mess. I mean- Yeah ... but that's the thing. And, and the thing is, is that people don't relate to perfection.
Toby Myles: Right.
Melanie Borden: People relate to the mess. They do. Yeah. They want to see the mess because they're a mess too.
Toby Myles: Yeah. I'm
Melanie Borden: not saying, you know, you want to show up as a, a disaster, but-
Toby Myles: Right. ...
Melanie Borden: in the, in the scope of, you know, you have to, in some terms, you have to build the plane while you fly it when it- Yeah ... comes to this type of a thing. Yeah. When it comes to launching your keynote, I'm going through this right now.
I don't have my keynote finished, but I'm trying to bring in keynotes. Mm-hmm. Because I know the only way that I'm gonna get better at speaking on stage and getting in front of those audiences that I want is by actually doing it.
Toby Myles: Yeah.
Melanie Borden: So it's just proven that whatever you want to do, you just have to do it, and you do it, and you do it.
Mm-hmm. And you have to be the beginner because everyone was a beginner at one point.
Toby Myles: Yes.
Melanie Borden: I saw a, I saw a video the other day of Tony Robbins in, like- Mm-hmm ... the early '80s talking at an event, and he was super young, and he was talking at an event, and it just goes to show he started... Once upon a time, he was a beginner too.
Right. Look at him.
Toby Myles: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's so key. You talk about being a beginner. Like, we d- when we're, um... When we have all these years of experience and, and, you know, sometimes in, like, one thing or sometimes in multiple things, like, we forget that at one time we didn't know what the heck we were doing in that area, right?
And so sometimes it really is, like, uh, like a hard thing to sit with when you start something new and you're like, "Ooh, I don't like this because I don't feel like I know what I'm doing. I'm not the expert or the authority," right? But, like, that's, that's okay. And I think you're so right about how people wanna see that because that is everybody, right?
Nobody comes out of the womb being an expert in anything other than maybe, like, pooping and eating, whatever. Yeah. Right? Right? Yes. And so, um, I had somebody on the show recently, and she talked about, um, this whole messy middle idea. And, like, it's all messy middle, right? Yeah. Like, it doesn't... It's not just, like, one thing.
It's not just one period in time. It happens over and over again every time we start something new.
Melanie Borden: Yeah, definitely. And I think that the more comfortable you are with the idea of, "This isn't gonna look perfect. I can do my best. I'm showing up as is," the easier it is for you to move forward and move through new things.
And, you know, a lot of times if I stop myself from doing something that I wanna do, I know to myself that that's a signal that means I need to do this.
Toby Myles: Yeah. '
Melanie Borden: Cause it's something, especially what you were talking about earlier, you just had this pull. Mm-hmm. When you have a pull towards something, that's your intuition telling you.
That's your future self saying, "You need to start this now. I'm not gonna-"
Toby Myles: Yeah. "
Melanie Borden: You know, I'm waiting for you on the other side."
Toby Myles: Yeah. So
Melanie Borden: it's definitely something that I firmly believe that you just, you have to take action in order to move through these scary things. And-
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm ...
Melanie Borden: you know, the people that don't and that stop at fear, those are the people that are gonna look back and say, "I wish I did this."
Toby Myles: Yes.
Melanie Borden: But it's not too late. People start- Right ... at any age. Yes. You can start anything you want at any age. There's no rules.
Toby Myles: Yeah. I, that, 1,000% I feel that. Sometimes I think people just hold themselves back 'cause they think, "Oh, well, you know..." I mean, I had this moment not that long ago where I realized, like, okay, there probably are some things that I maybe thought once upon a time I might do in terms of a career.
Not like traveling or something like that, but just like, you know, I, I don't... I can't think of anything right now. At one time I thought, oh, maybe I would be a good nurse or whatever. I don't, maybe that was it, I don't know. But, you know, I do realize, like, there are some things that require, like, a time commitment, and, you know, I'm not gonna become a nurse because I don't wanna put that time in and then, you know, start that career.
Right. That's not for me, and that's totally fine. But if I wanted to do it badly enough, I would, I would actually do it. It's just I have other things that are priorities, not becoming a nurse. So, um, so I love that. It r- it truly is. Like, if you're still, you know, on, on this side of the dirt and you're still, like, breathing, like, do the thing.
Like, just do it.
Melanie Borden: Yeah. And it's hard, too. I mean, I will say that something that comes up that I see a lot of that, you know, I've seen with those who I've encountered, I don't wanna put a label on who they are, but those who I've encountered in my travels have said to me, "Well, my spouse doesn't support this," or, "My family doesn't support this."
Or my friends don't support it, or my b- the company I work for. So find the people that do support it.
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm.
Melanie Borden: Find the people that want the same things that you want, and that are working towards those same things, to find your community so you don't have to do it alone, and you don't feel like you have to wait for other people to approve of you to do it.
Yeah. Because most of the time you can't, I mean, all the time, you can't control how other people feel and how other people view the world. It's based on their own life experiences.
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm, for sure. One of my friends said that, um, and I'm not sure where she heard this, I don't think she made it up, but she said that, I think it might have been her coach said that, um, other people's opinion of you is none of your business.
Melanie Borden: Right. It's so true. Yeah,
Toby Myles: yeah. Yeah. So, um, yeah, so then on that note, like, um, entrepreneurship is not easy, right? There's y- The understatement of the year. There's highs and lows and everything in between, trying to figure it out. Like, what are the things that, um, keep you going? And what made me think of it was, like, community, like having community who is also experiencing those same highs and lows.
But what would you say are the things that you kind of lean on to keep you moving forward?
Melanie Borden: I had discovered last year when I was writing the book, initially I had joined a book-writing cohort, and there was, like, 40 or 45 people in this cohort, and I developed relationships with the people that I was writing my book with every week.
And we would meet multiple times a week, and I realized that having- People around me and doing something intensive, and having really kind of, um, not scary, but having intense goals keeps me going. Mm-hmm. I am constantly trying to keep myself busy. You know, I set a goal this year, earlier in the year. I was gonna go on, you know, 28 or 20 or 30 podcasts, and then I decided, well, I'm already there, so I'm gonna move that number to 50.
Mm-hmm. And now I wanna be on 50 podcasts for the year to promote my book. Um, I'm working on my keynote. I'm working on other speaking assets. I'm working on launching melanieborden.com, which is, yes, I have my own brand, um, through my company, but I really wanna have something separate. And me, I, I like to be around people that are high achievers, I like to move at a fast pace, and I like to be very, very busy.
Mm-hmm. Because for me, when I'm not busy, I feel very bored. And if I'm bored, I feel depressed, and I don't like it, and I just like to try new things, and I like to push myself to see, hey, can I do this? Yeah. Is it something that is fun for me? And, and networking is a big part of that. Yeah. Um, yes, LinkedIn is an amazing site for networking and so forth, but really the in-person, you know, just getting to know people and having those relationships and being able to help others, um, is important to me, too.
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's, that's amazing. I feel like that sometimes idle time, it can be good I think sometimes for, um, you know, having the space to kind of like imagine what's next. Mm-hmm. Um, but it's funny because I decided that this year for the first time, January, I was not gonna hit the ground running. I was tired.
It was a busy 2025, especially the end of the year. And so I intentionally was like, "Okay, I'm not launching anything in January. I'm really gonna like take some time to, you know, update some things that need updating or whatever." But I felt this constant battle every day like, what am I doing? What am... Why am I not going faster, right?
And I struggled myself with some of those things. I'm glad that I took the time because I did make some progress on some things, but it was a struggle to p- kind of hold myself back a little bit.
Melanie Borden: Yeah. You have to listen to your body and especially with being an entrepreneur. There's one thing that I learned.
In 2022- I was operating at such a level that I look back and I think, "How was I doing that?"
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm. And
Melanie Borden: I ul- ultimately ended up going into the ER because I thought I was having a heart attack.
Toby Myles: Oh my gosh.
Melanie Borden: Having a panic attack, and I was overweight. And the doctor was like, "You need to eat healthier, and you need to slow down.
You need to hire some people to, to work for you and not- Mm-hmm ... do everything yourself."
Toby Myles: Yeah.
Melanie Borden: And, you know, you have to learn to listen to those signals where, you know, maybe in 2022 I would've stayed up until 2:00 in the morning working on a brief. Now I realize I'm better served going to bed at 9 o'clock- Yeah
and waking up at 5:00 AM and doing it from, you know, 5:00 AM till 8:00 AM- Yeah ... versus staying up really late. And, you know, you just learn those things, and that's definitely one of the, um, the... I would say the ups and downs with being an entrepreneur is you just learn, you know, kind of how to ride the different waves of-
the journey.
Toby Myles: Mm-hmm, yes, for sure. Oh my gosh. So, um, I wanna switch gears for a little bit here before we wrap things up, because I'm super curious. Um, do you remember when you were, like, a younger version of you, and I'm talking about, like, little girl Melanie. Did you know what you wanted to be when you grew up?
Melanie Borden: That's a good question. I wanted to be an artist my whole life.
Toby Myles: Okay.
Melanie Borden: Yeah, I did. And when I moved to New York City, I realized I wanted to live there more than I wanted to be an artist. That's- And that's how I got into advertising and marketing. Um- But that was really... You know, I'll never forget a conversation that I had with my mom, and she said to me something along the lines of, "Melanie, you can't be a starving artist living in a cardboard box on New York City streets."
Toby Myles: Yeah. And I
Melanie Borden: remember thinking to myself, "No, I don't wanna do that. That doesn't sound fun."
Toby Myles: No, not at
Melanie Borden: all. But I did love to work, and I did love advertising and marketing, and that's really how I started my career doing that, but-
Toby Myles: Yeah ...
Melanie Borden: you know, if I had a, a time machine, I wouldn't change anything.
Toby Myles: Yeah, yeah.
No. So, um, for anyone listening who is maybe feeling like they wanna start but they're feeling that imposter syndrome, or they think they're not ready, or they think they have to have it all figured out, like, what would be one piece of advice you would give them?
Melanie Borden: M- the best piece of advice I would give someone is to get a notebook and a pen, and to write down five things that they would want to achieve over the next five years.
And then- Take that, upload it into ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity, and ask it to create an action plan over those five years of everything that you have to do to achieve those goals.
Toby Myles: Wow. That's so good. And I love that you said that because we did talk about AI, and what you just talked about, I think, is one of the best ways we can use those tools, um, for ideation and for planning and structure and things like that.
So I absolutely love that. So tell people listening where they can find you online and connect with you.
Melanie Borden: My website is humantobrand.com. You can also find me, my handle on Instagram is humantobrand, and on LinkedIn under Melanie Borden.
Toby Myles: Awesome. Oh my God, this has been so much fun. I feel like we could keep going, so maybe there'll be a part two to this in the future.
But, um, thank you so much for being here, for all your wisdom, and just sharing openly with our listeners.
Melanie Borden: Anytime