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 75 of the Visionaries Pursuit Podcast. Next week.
We start our classes from the Visionary Mindset Program. We have our kickoff on March 19th, and I'm so excited to meet all the new entrepreneurs who are joining and seeing their transformation. Remember, the doors are open until early next week.
If you want to learn more about the program or you've been considering joining it, just book the time with me. My Calendly is here in the description. And we'll talk. We'll talk about your business, your goals, where you are at, and together we'll make the decision if this is the right program for you.
If you know anything about me, there's no strings attached on this call. It's not a hard sale at all. I don't like that. And also, it's an hour with me where I know you're gonna get value regardless the decision you make.
So don't miss out on this opportunity. And also stay tuned for our episode today because I am going to share with you the story of one of my clients and how she went from being stuck in her business and the transformation she had throughout the six months of the Visionary Mindset Program and where she's at today.
But before, you know, it's been a while since I share a little bit about my personal life, but I wanted to give a shout out to Andrew. His birthday was this past weekend and we got to celebrate him and love him and be grateful for everything. He's the most incredible dad and husband and business partner, and one of the reflections that I had was, which I've had in other times.
This is gonna sound a little bit negative, but it's from a good place. I think about how when people die in their memorials or their funerals, everyone shares stories about what they appreciated, how much they love this person. But that person is not there anymore. So why don't we share that love and that celebration with the people we love right now.
So this year for Andrew, we decided, the girls and I to make this bulletin board, and we collected letters and cards from his family and his friends, and everyone sent the sweetest notes of everything they loved and appreciated about Andrew and the girls decorated the bulletin board and it was just the cutest thing.
Shout out to Andrew. Happy birthday. We love you. You're an incredible part of this business, and if you have any loved ones that are having birthdays, don't forget to tell them how much you love them and what you admire in them, and how much you appreciate them. All right, so now into our episode.
Every week I'm having so many conversations with many different entrepreneurs, and one of the common themes I hear is how sometimes as entrepreneurs, we feel stuck as business owners, we feel like our business has hit a plateau and we don't know how to continue moving it forward, growing our revenue, or there's something in which we're feeling stuck.
That was a story of my client, Anna. Anna started her business I think over 10 years ago, and she's done well. She has a small business, but a mighty business.
A lot of testimonials and happy clients. The work she delivers is impeccable. It's amazing. But when she started VMP, she was sharing with all of us, with the entire group how she was feeling stuck, how you know the business, she was working lots and lots of hours every week. She had some people that worked with her in the business.
But she felt she wasn't making the money she wanted to make. In fact, sometimes after paying everyone that worked with her, there was minimal amount for her. And if you discounted her salary, the business was never profitable and she couldn't quite figure out why. One of the things we talk about in VMP is a relationship to money and how important it is that you, as the business founder, as the CEO, are very close to the money.
Are you looking into sales, your costs, your expenses every single week? Or have you delegated that to an accountant or you, just look at the balance and make sure you can pay for whatever you need to pay, but you really are not staying close to it. And this was happening to her. She wasn't paying attention to her money for months.
I think even for years. I've seen this happen not only in small businesses. I have another client who has a much, much bigger multi seven figure business who also wasn't very close to her money, who also had completely delegated it to her accountant until she had a big scare with money.
The point is, one of the things we talk about in VMP is that as CEOs as business founders, we need to stay close to the money. We need to understand how much is coming in from which products, how often, what marketing channels are bringing the clients, and also where is the money going?
How are we spending it? Are those expenses that we still have to be paying for? Are they valuable? And of course in VMP, we go a step deeper and we explore why as business founders, so many of us stay disconnected from money. How so many of us prefer to delegate it and not think about it. And the reason is because all of us have.
An interesting, let's say interesting relationship with money. We don't have a very clean relationship with money. Many of us have fears, have beliefs about making too much or making too little, or our ability to make money. Or we have stories that say we're not good with money. We don't understand it, that it's very complicated.
And relationship with money also affects the prices we charge. How often we give a discount, how sometimes we overpay people and don't hold them to the expectations we have for them. So really our relationship with money is affecting our business in so many different ways. So with my client, Anna, we started looking at her relationship with money.
We started looking at her practices with money and her habits, and the first thing she started doing was. Putting a spreadsheet that was easy for her to track with all her revenue and all her expenses, and every week. Looking at it closely. That brought up a lot of emotions for her. But the beautiful thing is since we're in a community in VMP, many of the other participants also raised their hands and said, I don't track the money and I have the same fears.
The beautiful thing is since in VMP we're part of a group, we're in a community. Many others raised their hand and many others also shared that they don't keep a close enough eye on their money. So it became a conversation in which we felt empathy and compassion and curiosity instead of shame.
And one of the things I know as a coach is that when you experience shame, that's when you get the most stuck. If you're able to overcome shame by being in a group of other people who are sharing your experience, who are not making a judgment about you or your character, or your capability, but more of a, oh yeah, this is part of our human experience, that healing that happens there is super powerful.
So going back to her story, where she started was putting that spreadsheet, looking at the numbers, and noticing how much money she was spending in certain areas of her business that she didn't need to be spending. So she started cutting costs and rethinking her business model. How can she make it profitable?
The second area we explored and also related to money was her pricing. This is a person who has lots of stories of happy customers and testimonials. She is recognizing her industry and appreciated and known for her high quality work, the work her company does, but her prices were not matching that. She knew, at a surface level that maybe she should be charging more.
She had never spent that time confronting herself on her pricing and making decisions to increase it, and looking at the fears that show up when we're gonna increase our prices. What if people don't buy? What if my clients leave me? What if someone criticizes me? What if someone says that I am? Greedy and that I only care about money, right? Like, because when we're good people, we don't wanna be perceived that way. And again, Anna is not alone in that same group. Many others also shared their fear around their pricing, their fear about getting criticism or judgment from their customers, or even their friends and their families for having high prices.
And by the way, I can also relate. I know in my entrepreneurial journey I've had fears of charging too much or charging too little or being judged by this or, or the other thing. But what we learn in the Visionary Mindset Program is that the price itself, the revenue itself, the money we're paying for certain help or products or software that we're using in our business that's neutral.
It's the way we think about it, our perspective, our beliefs about that money that end up impacting the results we have with money. So with Anna, we explore those beliefs. We talk about pricing, and she built the courage to start charging more.
The moment that she started charging more, she started getting clients that were more advanced, that had the ability to invest more, that were more committed to the work that we're gonna do with her than maybe someone who wasn't willing to pay us much. And that's something I've also noticed, that when we as human beings invest for something, we are way more committed to that investment and to getting a return on that investment that when simply we get it for free or it's very cheap.
So by talking, exploring through the Visionary Mindset program, her relationship to money, she started seeing her numbers, making strategic decisions to make her business profitable, increasing her prices, and therefore attracting clients that were more sophisticated and who valued her work way more than her previous clients.
This made her feel unstuck. This started building a momentum, a confidence, a new energy about her business that she hadn't had in years.
And look, Anna's story. Is not a unique story. For every person that has done this program, there's a transformation story to be shared.
And in fact, Anna's transformation goes beyond what I'm sharing. It touched so many different aspects about the way she thought about herself, her clients, her business model, her business as a whole, that have allowed her to transform her business and not only get results right now or during the month she was in the program, but these decisions she's made are gonna pay dividends, are gonna continue growing her business a lot more in the future years. And since in the last several weeks I've been talking with many of you about VMP. One of the things I often hear is, well, I don't know if it's the right time to invest this money and there's a fear about investing money, which I understand. But I also think that there is a mindset shift we have to go through in order to become the CEOs and the business founders that invest in our business.
If I look at the story of many of my peers, my story, my mentor story, many of entrepreneurs who are now very successful, they've all invested money in their business before they were comfortable. They weren't just investing when they had extra cash sitting around, nobody has extra cash sitting around.
They invested because they were thinking longer term. If I invest in this coach, if I invest in this program, if I invest in learning this new tool or framework, or skills for my business, how will this pay dividends in the long term? And not dividends just this year, but in the following year and the following year, I always tell my clients , the most beautiful thing about coaching is that whatever you invest here you're gonna benefit from what you learned for the rest of your life. Because I see it in me how much I've grown, how much I've evolved in my business. It wasn't just from one transformation once upon a time, and that happened like that transformation has stayed with me.
For example, some years ago I invested, I didn't have the money. I put it in a credit card on a program to teach me how to sell. And because I was so scared of selling because I didn't know how to do it well, and when I invested, it made in theory no sense, I was gonna go into debt to learn this skill. But that investment has paid a hundred XA thousand x because I did this course eight years, nine years ago, and since then my business took a turn and I've been making more money and more money each year.
And also I continue to invest in my mindset, in the way I think, because I see the impact it has on the decisions I'm making. And when we have a big vision, a big dream. We also need to learn how to become investors in us as the asset in us, as the brains that is creating your business, our business, our companies.
Go to the link in the description and let's talk. Let's talk about what would you love your transformation story to be?
Where would you like to see yourself six months from now, a year from now, let me explain to you how the Visionary Mindset Program is going to give you not only like the mindset, the mindset sounds sometimes so soft, but the way of thinking, the way of being, the way of making decisions, the way of overcoming obstacles and solving problems that is going to allow you to not only get to the vision you have right now, but hopefully one that is 10 x in the next several years.
With that said, I hope you have a great rest of your and I'll see you in the program. 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!
