mentoring and coaching for founders
For founders at the fork in the road.
I've built brands and managed teams, sometimes with a glass of champagne and others with a panic attack on retainer. I know what it feels like to stand in the messy middle and not be sure if the answer is to quit, pivot, or grit it out. This is the space I built to think it through with you. (champagne optional)
who I am
I'm Melodie. For the past 25 years I've worked in the beauty industry, and for the last twelve I've been building Elate Beauty, a trailblazing B Corp certified, vegan, refillable cosmetics brand.
I grew Elate to a team of about thirty people. Then I made the deliberate decision to downsize and rebuild the business as a solo founder. That decision, and everything I learned inside it, is the reason this coaching practice exists.
I'm not a coach who studied founders from the outside. I've sat exactly where you're sitting: in the middle of a business that's no longer the one you started, trying to work out honestly what it needs from you next.
Grit, Pivot, or Quit
Mentoring for the messy middle
I've spent twenty five years building a beauty brand from scratch, including the parts nobody puts on a mood board. I've grown a team to thirty and made the harder call to bring it back down. I've rebranded, reformulated, and rebuilt when the easy thing would have been to quit quietly.
I don't come to these conversations with a framework I'm trying to sell you. I come with questions that cut through the noise, and the willingness to tell you the truth even when it's not what you want to hear. My job isn't to keep you in business. It's to help you see clearly enough to know what's actually worth fighting for.
Here's how to work with me.
(Complimentary)
This isn't a sales call. It's a chance to say the thing out loud that you haven't said to anyone else yet.
Maybe you're not sure if your business is worth saving. Maybe you know it is, but you don't know what to change. Maybe you're doing fine and just need someone who's been in it to tell you you're not crazy.
Thirty minutes. No pitch deck, no framework, no homework. Just two founders talking honestly about where your business actually stands.
By the end, we'll both know if working together makes sense. If it doesn't, I'll tell you that too.
You don't always need six months. Sometimes you need three hours with someone who will ask the right question before you spiral into the wrong answer.
The Sprint is built for one specific decision. Quit it, pivot it, or grit it, the one that's been sitting in your inbox, your notes app, your 3am brain, unanswered for weeks.
We'll spend the first hour getting the real picture, not the version you tell investors or your mother. The second hour building the actual decision, with numbers where numbers matter and honesty where they don't. The third hour turning that decision into a plan you can start on Monday.
You'll leave with clarity, a written plan, and one recorded call to return to when doubt creeps back in.
This is for the founder who needs clarity and a decision made.
Some seasons in business don't have a clean decision at the center. They have a hundred small ones, made under pressure, with no one to check them against.
Six months of mentoring means you're not making those calls alone anymore. Every other week, we sit down and work through what's actually happening in your business, not the highlight reel version. Between calls, you can reach me when something breaks or something works and you need a second opinion fast.
This is built for the founder in the messy middle. The one who's downsized a team, or is thinking about it. The one rebuilding a brand from the inside out. The one who knows how to run a business but hasn't had anyone to run it past in a long time.
Twenty five years in this industry taught me that most founders don't fail from lack of skill. They fail from making hard calls in isolation. This is the antidote to that.
