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, welcome back. This is episode 73 of the Visionaries Pursuit Podcast. I love getting to sit with you every week, so thank you for joining. Before we jump into today's episode, I wanna take a moment to talk about the Visionary Mindset Program. Enrollment is currently open, and I would love all of you to consider the opportunity of being in this program.
I designed this for business founders who have a proof of concept who already have some clients, some revenue, but most importantly, for those of you who are committed to growing and scaling your business and becoming the leader that your business requires, to be able to get to the levels that you dream of.
Throughout the years coaching many different business founders, I started noticing some problems that we all face at some point in growing our business problems such as revenue being unpredictable. Some months we're at the. Top of the mountain, we're so excited, we believe we're taking off, and then the next month it's crickets and we start fearing that we'll never get another client, or those moments that we have so much pressure and there's so many things that are happening that we start making decisions out of urgency and fear and not from our power, from our vision, from our values.
Or those moments when we become the bottleneck of the business or when maybe emotions hijack us. You know those moments when we've lost a deal or a client left, or we got a bad review, or we had a really tough conversation with a business partner or employee, and we're feeling so much that we can't execute on what needs to happen.
And also I think many of you'll probably relate when you start thinking about growing your business, but you're already so tired and exhausted with the business you have that you ask yourself, where am I getting the energy to take this to the next level? All these problems could be solved with maybe more work, more coffee. Pushing yourself harder. We all know that it's not sustainable and that at some point just pushing harder is gonna come and bite us and actually hold us back from growing to the levels we want.
The core issue is that we're not thinking like a CEO. And therefore the problems are not being solved like a CEO. so What we do in the Visionary Mindset Program is upgrade our thinking is upgrade. The way we see ourselves is learning new ways of thinking and solving problems that don't come from fear and reactivity, but actually come from our creative competencies, us being our best version to solve those problems.
I know emotions are usually not part of a business conversation, but all of us have had those moments in which really the emotions feel so big that either we're making decisions out of reactivity or we're being completely paralyzed by them. So we need to learn how to navigate them. So we need to learn how to master them so we are in charge of them instead of them running us. We also talk about our relationship with money. We all are business founders. Yes. Because we wanna create an impact or we feel passionate about a product or service. But also because we wanna make money and a lot of the times the relationship we have with money is the reason why we get stuck at a certain level of income or why we give discounts to people. So in the money confidence module, what we're going to explore is your relationship to money right now and how you can improve it. So you can make more and more money with ease.
And the last module is called capacity work. And this has to do with how we manage our energy. How do we grow our internal capacity so we can hold a bigger business, more clients, more revenue. And also we know that with a bigger business there comes more challenges. So how do we become better at managing those challenges without burning out?
The other beautiful part about this program is that we do it in a community. Being an entrepreneur can be a very lonely journey. You might have employees, even maybe your family supporting you, but nobody knows what is the experience of being an entrepreneur unless you are going through that journey yourself.
So by being in a group of other entrepreneurs, what you're going to realize is that some of the problems and fears you have, you're not alone in them. Many share them with you, but you're also gonna be inspired by how others solve those problems. How they think about their businesses, how they continue to grow.
So if you are one of those entrepreneurs that is committed to growing their business, but maybe your revenue is unpredictable, maybe you're the bottleneck, maybe you're exhausted and you don't know where the energy is gonna come to continue growing. Maybe you find yourself giving discounts and believing that it's the discounts what get clients. I wanna invite you to book a one hour call with me. Tell me about your business, your challenges, your goals. I promise you, in that call, I will give you tons of value and insight, and then together we can decide if the Visionary Mindset Program is the right fit for you.
Underneath this episode, in the description, there's a link to my calendar. Go ahead, find a spot that works for you, book the session and I'll see you in the call. I'm excited to meet you.
And now let's move to the content for this episode.
What I want us to talk about today is when we hit those plateaus as entrepreneurs, maybe revenue isn't growing. You've tried different things, but you can't seem to keep growing and finding new clients and more revenue. Or maybe your business that once was growing really fast is stuck. Maybe you're even going backwards a little bit. The entrepreneurial journey is not a straight line up. The journey has ups and downs and valleys and plateaus. So if today you're hitting a plateau in some way, shape, or form, what I wanna do in this episode is offer you a way of thinking about this with the goal to inspire you to spark inside of you new ways of resolving the problem you have.
So the first concept I wanna introduce is this idea of are we playing to win? Or are we playing not to lose. Many of us, when we start our business, we don't have anything to lose really. We're just starting with an idea. So we're more willing to take bigger risks to put ourselves out there in a bigger way.
Later when we already have something that's working, we start feeling that there is something to lose. Something that is very interesting about human psychology is that we experience losses way bigger and more intense than how we experience wins. They've done this research with lottery winners who have then lost that money and the level of happiness they experience by winning the lottery is a lot less than the level of sadness they experience when they've lost the money. And I think when we hear this, we all understand that concept.
So when we first start our business, there's nothing to lose. So many of us are playing to win. We're taking big risks. We're going for it. We're being creative. We're willing to change the way we think or how we're operating. But when the business starts working, we have some clients. There's something we've already created the fear of losing that can hold us back, and that's when we start playing not to lose. The problem is that when we play not to lose. We probably will end up losing. The game of being an entrepreneur is one of taking big risks.
Obviously thinking about them and being smart about them, but it's about having the ability to ask tough questions, reinvent ourselves, try different things. So I wanna give you different examples of how it looks to play, to win or to play, not to lose in different areas of our business. Let's start with our vision and our planning and our goals. So when we're playing, not to lose. We are not even setting goals. We are like so into the day to day doing what we know, putting off fires, getting things done.
All of our time is invested in doing, doing, doing the things that need to happen to operate the business today. When I talk with entrepreneurs, one of my first questions is, what is your goal? And some entrepreneurs are very clear, but others, the ones who are playing not to lose, have a hard time deciding on a revenue goal because they're scared they won't meet it.
So as one entrepreneur told me, you know, last year we lost money, so this year, whatever is above zero, that's a win.
I think that's thinking in a way that you're protecting yourself from the loss. Playing to win is, having a three-year plan is challenging yourself to double the revenue, even when you're unsure on how that's gonna happen, but you're committed to your goal more than you're committed to your fear.
So if you're currently stuck in a plateau, the first question I want you to ask yourself is, do I have a clear goal, not only for this year, for the next six months, but do I have a vision of my next three years, my next five years, where is it that I'm heading to, and are those goals ambitious? Are they challenge you? Are they expanding you? And if the answer is no. I don't want you to beat yourself up. Of course, we know that never works, but I do want you to take a moment and ask yourself why, and be very honest with yourself and maybe considering that you're playing not to lose instead of playing to win.
The second area is what I'm calling a business audit. So when we're stuck in a plateau, we need to understand what is holding us there. Is it our marketing strategies, our sales process? Is it something internally? Is it maybe that we have to humble ourselves and take two steps back so we can move 10 steps forward? And that might look like closing a line of business that is not working or making your business smaller so it becomes profitable before you grow it.
Or it's looking at your leadership? Is it your way of making decisions? A business audit is asking the tough questions, is having an honest conversation with yourself. To understand what's holding you and your business back when we're playing not to lose. When we do a business audit, we tend to think things like, well, this is how we've done it and this works, or no, if we make that change, we might lose some customers or even being stubborn. Right? Like, no, it has to work. There is only one way of making it work, and I have to keep pursuing that. So anything that is conservative thinking, meaning you wanna keep the status quo, you're scared of changing things radically, that might be a clue that you're playing not to lose.
When you're playing to win, you have a critical eye. You hire other people to show you your blind spots. If the problem is in cashflow, you hire someone who's an expert in finance and numbers to come and analyze everything in your business so you can make the business profitable. If it's in marketing, you hire marketing experts.
When you're playing to win, you are not worried about spending and investing money in your business to solve the current problem so you can continue to grow. So again, if you're in a plateau right now, I want you to ask yourself, how am I doing my business audit? How critical am I being? How honest am I being?
Is there any part of me that is wanting to be conservative? Meaning I wanna keep doing what I've done in the past because I'm scared of change. Is there any part of me that is arrogant, that doesn't wanna take the three steps back, close that line of business, make your business smaller so you can grow later on? Is there anyone that you can hire? And if the answer again is that you notice you are playing not to lose. Good. You know this, you can be kind to yourself and then know that this business audit is critical for you to be able to move forward.
Another area I've seen businesses get stuck is in sales. When entrepreneurs are playing not to lose, they might sell to the wrong client just to get the revenue in. They might be giving discounts just to get some clients in. They might be keeping clients that are not ideal. I've talked with business founders who have clients that are not profitable and they're keeping them because in their mind it is better to have a client that's not profitable than to have none.
I've also talked with business founders who believe that the only reason why people are buying is because of their discounts. This way of thinking that is more around scarcity, around fear is you playing not to lose. When you're playing to win, you are spending a lot of time understanding your clients, their language. How do you get closer to them? How do you explain the problem you're solving or the benefits you're offering? Better than your client can do it.
You're going for your ideal clients only. You're not afraid of having conversations about money, objections, and defending, not in a way of like defensiveness, but really stating why your price is that price, and instead helping your clients perceive the value that is included in your product or service.
So again, take a moment. How much risk are you taking with your sales What are your beliefs of getting the best clients, of getting paid at the level you wanna be paid? What are your beliefs about your service or product? Do they offer the value you're promising?
And the last area I want us to explore is the relationship you have with your employees when you have a team, actually, even sometimes, even before hiring a team.
A common fear I see in business owners is the fear that employees are going to leave or that people won't wanna come and work in their business. So one of my favorite questions to ask about employees is knowing everything you know about employee a. If they weren't your employee, would you hire them?
And sometimes the answer from my clients is, no, I wouldn't keep that employee. So when I dig a little bit deeper as to why? You're keeping that employee, the answer is because if I fire them, who's gonna do their work? We don't have anyone to replace them or the, it's really tough to find someone in that area, or I don't have time right now to go through the recruitment process.
Listen, it is tough to lose an employee because there's gonna be a hole. There's gonna be an emptiness, but your responsibility as the CEO of your business is to have A+ players in every seat. Your team is what's gonna allow your business to grow, and if you're allowing mediocrity, you know, usually employees that are not the best are bringing the entire team down.
Another way I see people playing not to lose with their employees is that they hold back from giving them critical feedback, from having the tough conversations, from setting ambitious goals and holding them accountable to those goals.
When I hear the phrase, oh, I want my employees to be happy, for me, that's a red flag. Of course we want employees to be happy, but our job as a CEO is not to make them happy, it's to provide the environment that allows them to succeed as employees, to become their best version and to add value to the business.
On the other side, when we're playing to win, we're going for the best employees. We're not holding back because if we really believe our business is going to grow to the levels we want it to grow, we're willing to take the risk and invest in people who are gonna help us take that business there. We are also not holding back in assigning them goals, setting clear expectations, holding them accountable, and also giving them the training and the resources so they can achieve their goals.
So as we've been doing this episode, I want you to take a moment and again, ask yourself, when I think about my employees and my team, am I playing not to lose or am I playing to win? How do I feel about the team I have right now? Is this the team that is gonna get me out of the plateau and to the next level?
And if the answer is no, or any doubt you might have about this, that is an important thing for you to look at.
Feeling stuck. Being stuck in a plateau. It's hard. Listen, you're not alone if you're there. Sometimes it almost feels like an impossible mountain to climb, but what I do know, what I believe with all my heart is that when we work on the way we're thinking, when we seek support from others, to see our blind spots, to learn new things, to challenge ourselves to think about a problem in a new way, we start finding a different solution. There's a beautiful quote and, and I don't have it in front of me, but it says something around the lines of. The brain that will solve the problem cannot be the same brain that created the problem.
And that's why we need to upgrade our thinking, and that's why we need to upgrade our self-concept. That's why we need to do our internal work so we can solve the challenges we have right now with a newer version, with a more evolved version of ourselves. One of the beautiful things Andrew's doing with these episodes is that in the description he's creating you can think about it , as a playbook about the episode, so you don't have to listen to this episode and take notes.
You can read the description, and you will have the framework or the playbook to understand what might be keeping your business stuck, what might be the reason you're stuck in a plateau.
And also remember, if you wanna take this conversation further, if you wanna understand how my coaching can help you break through this plateau, the link for my calendar is also in the description.
Go ahead, book a session with me and let's explore your business, your challenges, and let's find a way that you can break through and continue growing. All right, my friends, it was great being with all of you today. I'll 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!
