Welcome to Visionary’s Pursuit, a podcast where we explore what it takes to turn your bold and inspiring ideas into reality. I'm Carolina Zuleta. I'm a life and business coach and your host for this podcast. I'm thrilled to have you here.
Hi, and welcome back. This is episode 36 of the Visionaries Pursuit Podcast, and today I wanna bring you into a conversation I had with a friend from which I got so many insights that I really wanna share with all of you. But before we jump into today's episode. I wanna make sure that all of you know about my new masterclass that is called the Seven Beliefs You Need to Grow Your Business Faster.
I'm teaching it today, Wednesday at 4:00 PM Eastern, and tomorrow at 2:00 PM Eastern Time. The beliefs I'm gonna share in this masterclass, I didn't learn them in business school, not even when I did all the entrepreneurial classes. I didn't learn them when I worked for a startup for six years. I didn't even think about them in the first several years of my business.
It took me a while to really uncover them, learn them, make them conscious and believe in them. But what I know is that the moment I started thinking that way, my business took off and then I started teaching those same beliefs to my clients and I started seeing how their businesses took off. So that's why I wanna teach them to all of you.
If you have thought about starting a business or you're at the beginning stages, or you're growing it, I really believe that what I'm gonna teach you in this masterclass is gonna save you a lot of headaches and disappointments and time and energy. It's gonna help you arrive at your desire, results way faster.
That class is completely free, packed with value, and I really encourage you to not miss it. To sign up, you can go to carozuleta.com/mindset. Okay, so as the conversation with my friend, here's what happened. She and I have another friend who's also entrepreneur. The three of us are entrepreneurs, and the third friend, not the one I was talking with, has made in her business probably 40 times the revenue my friend and I have made in our own businesses, although we all started around the same time.
So my friend very casually asked Caro, well, why do you think that other friend of ours has made so much more money in her business, has grown way bigger than what we have in this time? Like, what is the difference? What do you think is happening to us? And the energy of this conversation wasn't about comparing and despairing.
We were actually really curious why did this third friend. Grown so much and then she and I started going back in our history when we started the business. What has happened in the last 8, 9, 10 years, and we started uncovering that both of us multiple times had prioritized other things than our business.
Instead, our friend had prioritized her business all the time. The friend that I was talking to is a mom, and in the last 10 years she's had babies and me too. And we both agreed that multiple times we had stopped working on our businesses because we had prioritized being at home with our kids. In my story, I started my business in January, 2016, and July of that year, my husband proposed and we started planning a wedding.
We decided we were having a overseas wedding back in Columbia where I grew up. A couple of weeks of planning our wedding, I found out I was pregnant, so we decided to postpone the wedding until the baby was six months old and as many moms do the first trimester. I felt very, very tired. So I took a lot of naps and I rested a lot and I put my business on the side.
I still worked a little bit, but not what was required to grow my business. Then my baby was born and I spent lots of time with her, and I also was finishing planning my wedding because I decided that I was getting married six when the baby was six months old. So I was pretty busy with a newborn baby, an international wedding.
Plus I, not only the wedding, but I decided to do all these trips for my family and friends from the US who were coming to Columbia for the first time. Anyway, I just spent a lot of time in logistics and planning and taking care of my baby. And I kept telling myself, okay, once, once I'm done with the wedding, then I'm gonna focus fully on my business.
But the wedding happened, the baby got a little bit older. I found someone who could help with the baby for a couple of hours. That first year of starting my business 2016, and actually all of 2017, my business was not my priority. It was something that I was doing on the side a little bit here and there.
But I wasn't giving it all my time and attention. Then when my daughter was a little bit older that she started going to daycare, I thought, this is my time. I'm gonna grow my business. And I did prioritize and that I worked very hard and I started seeing some results and then COVID started. So I stopped again because I had to take care of my baby because daycare was close.
My husband was, my husband was working. Extreme hours trying to save the company he was working for in the middle of all this crisis. So again, my business went on the side and I didn't prioritize it. And after that we decided we were gonna move. So I then spend all this time planning the move, finding the new home, you know, getting all the things that are ready to get to a new place, to a new house, to a new city, all of it.
And again, my business was on the side and like that. Then I had another baby, then I took another maternity leave. So I started and stopped in this last almost 10 years, many times. I don't look back with regret, but now I look back with an understanding as to why my business is not the size of the business of this other friend, right?
Why my revenue for 10 years is probably one 40th of what she has made, and I just told you the big reasons why I stopped. But the truth is that there were 101,000 mini reasons why I stopped. Oh, a friend is visiting. Oh, we're going on vacation. Oh, I came back so tired from vacation that I need a couple of days to rest.
Oh, now it's Christmas, so I'm gonna stop now and I'm just gonna restart in January. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and that is all fine. You know, I have to say that I'm very privileged because my husband for all those years was a breadwinner, so I didn't have the pressure of bringing money into our household.
But the part that I think I would change is the story I told myself because during the first seven or eight years of my business. I felt a lot of frustration. I felt a lot of sadness. I blamed myself as incompetent, or I can do it. I'm not a good entrepreneur for not getting the results when now. I think that the story I should have told myself is, listen, my business is not a priority, and that's okay.
Nowadays, I meet a lot of people who are interested in starting their businesses and they want my help. And when they're ready to commit to a coaching program, they tell me, well, well, you know, I have a vacation plan next week, so maybe we can start when I come back. Or, you know, what, right now at work is really, really busy and I'm gonna work until I'm done with this project or that other project.
And then, and then I'll start focusing on my business. I hear it all the time. Stories as to why people don't wanna start their businesses right now. They don't wanna commit to their project or idea, and I think that's completely fine. You get to decide when you want to build your business, but here's where I think it's the lesson number one, to tell yourself the truth.
Don't tell yourself, well, I'm gonna go on vacation and then I'll start. Or when things are easier at work, I'm gonna start. Tell yourself my business is not a priority right now, and that is okay. And the reason why I make an emphasis in that is because when we tell ourselves that we're gonna start at a later date, the message, the programming we're giving to our brain is that the energy and time that goes through our business, it's whatever we have left over.
Or we start believing that we have to find the perfect time to build our business when the truth is that there's always gonna be something. Even after I had my second baby, I came back from maternity leave and I've been fully committed to this business. There's things that have happened. A lot of them.
But now the way I think about it is the same way someone who has a more structured corporate job thinks is, okay, I'm going on vacation, but here are all the things I'm gonna complete before I go. And here's where I'm gonna start again, and here are the new goals. It's not a completely stop, it's more a pause that I go on vacation and then I come back.
So if you're listening to this and you're noticing that you're in this place where you keep thinking you wanna build a business, but in reality you're not prioritizing it, I recommend that you stop, tell yourself the truth, and play the movie towards the future. What happens if in a year from now you don't have your business?
What happens if in two years from now you don't have your business or three or four or five, or you have a side hustle, which is not really a business that's growing and evolving, how would you feel? Are you okay with that? Is that what you want? Or are you gonna wake up in two years and feel sad that you get busy doing so many other things?
And you didn't put the effort that was required to build what you want, your project, your vision, your desire, and if you're okay with it, then choose. Then decide, you know what? Right now I'm not gonna build this business, or right now I'm just gonna do this side hustle, this little thing on the side because I want to, but I'm not gonna tell myself that I'm building a business.
But if you look towards the future and you think. Oh no, I would be crushed because I really wanna have a business. Or you can think about it the other way. You look into the future and you imagine having your business making hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars, and that really excites you.
Then decide that you're going to commit and learn how to build your business. In the middle of chaos. Learn how to build your business. While you're having a baby, while you're going on vacation, while your family members are visiting, while you're having to attend your kids' place or, or when your day job is full of challenges, train yourself to think as the entrepreneur you wanna become.
This friend that I mentioned before who has made 40 times the revenue I've made is going on maternity leave pretty soon, and as I was talking with her, she has. An exact plan as to when she's coming back from maternity leave and what is she going to do when she comes back? Who is going to help her with her baby, how many hours she's going to work, what are her goals?
And I look at her and I think, wow, you know, you can't take as much time off as you want. And that doesn't have to mean that you stop building or growing your business. It just means that you are taking a break. But you have a plan to keep going and moving forward. When we stop and start, when we tell ourselves we're building a business, but we're not, we start eroding the confidence we have in ourselves to be entrepreneurs, to meet our goals, to realize our visions.
And that really hurts us in the long term. And if you are like me for many years, that I really wanted to grow my business. But I wasn't doing it. I encourage you to go a little bit deeper. What are the thoughts you're telling yourself about what it means to grow a business? That you don't have time for it, that you're gonna be exhausted and burned out?
I. That you're scared of failing, that you don't know how to do it, that you're not good at doing it, and I recommend you explore those thoughts. You challenge them, you question them because they are the ones that are really holding you back from realizing your dream. The myth that we tell ourselves is, I'll start when I'm ready.
But the truth is that we have to start before we feel ready. We don't have to feel ready to start. We have to commit to it and do a little bit by a little bit, by a little bit each day until you start getting momentum, and then it's easier to keep going with the flow of growing a business again, going back to this initial conversation I had with my friend.
One of the reflections I've had is something Tony Robbins says. He says, most of us overestimate what we can do in a year and underestimate what we can do in 10 years. And I remember in the first several years of my business, I had so many things I wanted to do in one year that I would feel so overwhelmed.
But then I would distract myself with all these other personal life projects and didn't do them. But I wonder what would've happened if I had just stayed at least with one single thing week after week. The first podcast I launched, it was in 2017. I did it for a while and then I stopped, and then I launched another one in 2020 and I stopped.
I wonder where my podcast would be today if I hadn't stopped. What would be the impact of that podcast today in my business in the world if I wouldn't have stopped retired them from Spotify and Apple Podcast and start from a blank slate. So wherever you are, tell yourself the truth. And if your truth is that you wanna grow your business.
Prioritize it, put it in the calendar. Do one step at a time and keep moving forward. And in 10 years, you're gonna wake up and blow your own mind as to the umpire you've grown. So if you're part of this entrepreneurial journey, tell yourself the truth. And if your truth is that you wanna have a successful business, start right now.
Don't wait until you're ready. Start taking one small step after the other and just keep moving forward. Because I know that in three years, five years, 10 years of taking small steps, you are going to be amazed of what you were able to do and. If you're in this journey, join me this afternoon for the masterclass, the seven Beliefs to Grow your Business faster.
If you can't do it today, you, it's available tomorrow, Thursday at 2:00 PM Eastern time. Go to carol zuleta.com/mindset and I look forward to seeing you there. Bye-bye.
If you're currently pursuing a big, bold idea and would love some support, let's talk. In my coaching program, I'll teach you how to manage yourself, your own thoughts and emotions. as well as your team and your money so you can turn your beautiful idea into a reality. Go now to carozuleta.com slash consult that is c a r o z u l e t a dot com slash consult and complete the form to book a complimentary call with me.
See you there!
