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 46 of the Visionaries Pursuit Podcast. As always, I'm so grateful that I get to be with all of you here, and if you hear that I have a little bit of a rest or voice today is because I have a cold, any parent of toddlers or kids that are going to daycare, you know that the moment these kids go back to school.
There's a no virus showing up in our house, and this one took us all down, but here we are and excited to share this episode with you.
One of the topics that I'm constantly working with my clients on and honestly also with myself, is our self-concept is the way we see ourselves as leaders, as founders, as visionaries. And the reason why we have to constantly be working on our self-concept is because as our businesses grow, our self-concept has to evolve.
Our previous self-concept or our previous identity has to die. And that is a hard change for many of us. So let me break it down this way. When we first start our business, we're doers. We are the person who's doing probably everything because we have no one still joining our team.
We have all the ideas. And anything that happens in our business, it's because of us.
We know every single detail of the business. We know how to fix things when they break, what makes us strong at this stage is to be a hustler, to be able to put in the long hours, to be creative and solve problems, and to be very close to our business.
But as our business grows, that part of us that loves being a doer. Becomes a bottleneck because now there's no way that in the eight, 10 hours a day we put into our business, we can do all the things and then we need other people. But if we're still used to being doers, to being the ones that are doing all the things, we're gonna start creating problems in our business.
This reminds me of a client that just like many founders, he started his business on his own and then he hired a team and. His team would complain because he would end up being in their Google docs or in their whatever program they were using, fixing things and changing things, and they were always so confused.
Why is the founder, why is the CEO of this company that already has 20, 30 employees getting in the details of that? He became the bottleneck because he wanted to have approval of every single aspect of the company, every decision that was made, and he was the one who was holding the company back.
So with him, what we started doing is moving him to the next phase. And the next phase is not about doing, it's about managing and about deciding, and to be able to decide and to manage. You need space. You need time in your calendar that you're not putting out fires or just doing, doing, doing. You have to create space to think, to analyze, to make decisions. So with this client, we started looking at his calendar, trying to figure out when was the best time for him to have time to be with himself, with his ideas, to make higher level decisions.
And what ended up happening is that he would feel this anxiety of seeing blocks in his calendar that were just open to think and without being conscious, he would fill it up with other things to do.
This is the first identity that has to die. So the doer is the first identity we need to shed. A lot of us tie our, self-worth to all the things I did today. We love having a checklist and thinking, look at all the things I did today, 1, 2, 3, and we can count them and see in a very tangible way the effort we're putting in.
So then we move to our second self concept, which is the decider or the manager. So in this identity, what we're doing is we're making higher level decisions and we are teaching others how to execute on those decisions we're making.
And what makes us good at this stage is not doing, it's our ability to prioritize, communicate, delegate, and create systems and processes in which other people can execute our ideas.
So a lot of us hire our first employees because we're trying to save time. If I hire this person, then I have time to do these other things. What really happens is that the time you were using before to do things, to accomplish tasks is now gonna be dedicated to managing people.
A common mistake that I see here happening with my clients is that we all think that because in our minds it's so clear the outcome we want, what we want other people to do. That we say very little about everything we have in our brain.
We don't communicate properly. We believe in a very unconscious way that others can read our mind, and we have the belief that we're saving time, so we should spend less time with the people that are reporting to us. This is the stage where you need to stay very close to your employees.
And teach them everything that is in your brain. So no longer you are the one doing the programming, the Excel spreadsheet, the development of the product, but you are the one who's close to your employees, telling them, teaching them, guiding them on how to do it, and then developing the systems so they can continue doing it in the way that you like.
This can often lead to a lot of frustration when you think your employees are not doing what you're telling them to do. They're not meeting the quality or the standards you're setting. But when I talk with the employees of my clients, what I realize is that my clients who are the managers, the deciders, the founders are not being that clear. They think they are, but they're not, and they think that it's gonna take a lot less time and effort to educate and train their employees.
When the opposite is true, it's gonna take a lot more to communicate everything you have in your brain, the vision, how you want things to look, how you want things to feel, the speed at which you want them to do it. It takes a lot to communicate all of that. And one of the abilities you have to develop at this stage. Is the ability to be able to go into your brain, really understand everything that you want, put it on paper, and make it very clear for others to understand it and learn it.
And I think that the other challenge we face at this stage is allowing others to fail. There's an anxiety when we start letting others do, and we know that they're probably gonna fail, make mistakes, and we wanna control that. So the part of us that stays so close to the employees who at times is micromanaging or really trying to control that they don't make mistakes is the doer. It's the old identity that we have to shed.
This identity has to be able to know the level of risk you're taking when others are doing what you used to do before. Create some space for mistakes. While at the same time monitoring the risk of those mistakes.
And the last thing I'll say about this identity that I see my clients struggle with is that you don't have that dopamine rush of the checklist of, look at how much I did today. And you have to be able to be okay with that.
And then our business continues to grow and we start hiring more people. And now we start feeling separate from new employees. I often hear my clients complain that they don't even know the employees that are being hired to their business, that they feel so removed from those new hires.
And this is where the new identity has to emerge. The new self concept. You're gonna go from being the decider, the manager, to being the visionary, to being the CEO.
So if the manager was the person that was able to produce results through others, the visionary is the one that sets the vision, embodies the culture and scales. One of the pain points that emerges at this stage is that now you can't be close to everyone to explain your decisions, to tell them your exact message, and there's more people. So there are more people that are gonna disagree with you, that are gonna judge you, that are not gonna approve of what you're doing.
So you're gonna have to let go of that identity of that self-concept of you being the manager, the one who's close to the employees. And becoming the person that is the culture of the company. So now you're not thinking about how do I talk specifically to this client? You're talking about how do I create a culture that reflects my values?
So here you have to shed the identity of the manager, the self-concept that told you that your value was because people liked you and you were close to them, and you were motivating them and you knew everything about their careers and their lives and you were so close to them.
In fact, a lot of times what happens is that this first group of employees are people you knew previously. They worked with you in a different company or their family members or friends that you hired. So you feel very close to them and they probably love you and adore you, but as you grow to the third phase, which is the visionary.
You're hiring people that you've never met before, that you probably will never get to know intimately, you will never get to know who they are or why they're here, who will disapprove of you? So now your new self-concept can't be about doing or about managing. It has to become about embodying.
You have to now embody the self-concept of the leader, of the visionary that others believe in.
Probably at this stage, you're doing very little. The value you're adding to the company comes from casting a long-term vision. Creating the culture, the context in which everyone can operate from and create that vision. And you're probably spending your day mostly in meetings and having conversations, maybe not even with your direct reports, maybe it's now with other investors, with the board, with other people who have an interest in the longevity.
And at this stage, you're not doing anything. It's not that you're not adding value to the company, it's just that you are not the person who's sitting and designing the brochure or programming your product. You are not. Doing the things in your business, most of your time, you're probably gonna be spending it, talking with investors, the board potential partners, people who are interested in the long term of your business.
And for many of my clients they mourn the days that they were in the hustle, in the creation, where they would decide something and immediately make it happen. Now they have to be thinking in longer term. They can be far away from many of their employees, and they need to start seeing themselves in a new way as a visionary, not the doer, not the manager, but the visionary.
So as you can see, every stage requires a new identity, a new self-concept, and it means you have to let go of the previous self-concept. So how do we do this? This is what I spent a lot of times doing with my clients, but I'm gonna give you some tips.
The first thing is you need to recognize at what stage you're currently at. The. Are you at the stage of being the doer? Are you at the stage of being the manager, the decider, or are you at the stage of being the visionary? That's step number one. You need to understand right now, today in your business, what is the way you add the most value?
Is it by doing things? Is it by teaching others to do it in your way? Or is it by creating the context in which the company's gonna operate?
Once you're clear, what is your role, you need to fully embrace that new role and let go of the previous one. And this is what we do in our Visionary Mindset program. This is a lot of the conversation we're having with other visionaries, how to let go, being vigilant to those moments where our previous identity comes and wants to lead. And also this is the part that I think most people don't talk about dealing with all the emotions that come up when we're shedding one identity and moving to the next one, the guilt, the sadness, the fear of the lack of control, the uncertainty.
Those are the things we need to talk about with other visionaries. Get coached on so we can release them. So we need to first understand where we're at and then develop the capacity and the ability to let go to release the previous identity.
And I would say the third step, but really these steps are all happening simultaneously, is the rebuild, so the rebuild of the new self concept, the understanding of who this new version of you is.
So one of the things we do in the Visionaries Mindset program is we spend time getting very clear on this new version of ourselves. How does this person think, feel, decide what motivates them, what capacities does this new version have? And we start embodying, we start living as this new self concept until it becomes integrated in our system.
I strongly believe this exercise of continuously upgrading our self-concept and becoming the leader our company's need at each stage is fundamental. If you stay in the mindset of the doer, you will never be able to grow your company to probably the vision or the goal you have.
Same thing with the manager. If you are an ambitious founder, if you want your business to impact more and more people, hundreds of thousands of people, you are gonna have to go through the evolution yourself. And I think in order to transform your identity, it is very important fundamental to have someone who is outside of your brain who can point to your blind spots, who can show you how you are still being your old self, when you need, when it's time to evolve.
So if you're a founder and you're feeling the pressure. Of your own evolution, I want to invite you to join me in the Visionary Mindset Program.
We are gonna be opening the doors at the end of this month, so the best way to receive all the information is to go to my website, carozuleta.com and sign up for my newsletter. That way you will be the first to know when the doors open.
It's great talking with all of you. See you next time. 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!
