Expand Your Fempire Podcast #118 Transcript

How to Use Determination to Overcome Your Challenges

Welcome to Expand your Fempire with Caterina Rando, the podcast for women in business on a mission. Sharing ideas to support you to grow and thrive. Now here’s your host, Caterina Rando.

[00:00:00] Caterina Rando: Welcome back to another episode of the Expand Your Fempire Podcast. I’m your host, Caterina Rando, and I am blissing to be with you today. In one of our earlier episodes, I discussed several topics and one of those hot topics, determination , I decided for today we are gonna go deeper on, we are gonna shine the spotlight on, because I really feel that this is something that will make a difference for you in your business and your life.

[00:01:04]  Here’s the guiding principle. Determination is the antidote to whatever is challenging for you in your business. Since some things happened a few years ago, you may have heard in an earlier episode about my difficult divorce and, these significant financial challenges around all of that. I really have amplified, turned up, cultivated, had my attention on being more determined than ever to get the outcomes that I want.

[00:01:53] I speak to you today as a business owner with no financial stress, as a business owner with plenty of surplus in the bank, and perhaps the most important thing with a bright future, as I look forward to next year. The thing that has created this – yes, experience, yes, taking action. Yes. Doing what I do well and people appreciating it and getting great results for my clients. Yes.

[00:02:34] The ingredient, though that we do not talk about enough is the antidote to discouragement, disappointment, self-doubt, which we all experience.

[00:02:51] A few weeks ago, I did my speaker Mastermind retreat in Napa Valley. It went phenomenally. It was great. The ladies loved it. They got massive value. There was transformation. Before we left the property, half of the women that were there signed up for next year to come again or to do something else.

[00:03:17] A week or two later, two of them had canceled their next orders, their next programs. You know what? I could have been disappointed. I could have been discouraged. I could have been depressed. I could have doubted, “what did I say or do that was wrong?” Could have done any of those things, and believe me, I know I could have done any of those things because I’ve done those things many times in the past.

[00:03:47] Instead, I got determined. Determined to talk to them. Determined to turn the situation around. Determined to find the best solution for them. Determined to address any concerns they had. Determined to figure out the money part in a different way, if that was the reason for the cancellations. I’m sharing this with you because I’m inviting you to amplify, to turn up your determination to create what you want.

[00:04:25] And I’m gonna share with you right now in our time together, some ways to do that. And I’m hoping not only you’re gonna listen, you’re gonna say, this is good Caterina, but you are gonna put some of these things in place because I know that you are a woman on a mission with massive value to bring. The thing is though, that these things that we’ve mentioned, discouragement, self-doubt, disappointment, depression. These get in the way of us living our blissful business life.

[00:05:06] Yesterday, a really cool thing happened. I have this friend, I met her about 12 years ago. She was a client of mine for a couple of years. Fabulous gal. Dynamic, fun, social, enjoy every minute I spend with her. As I said, client for a couple years. Then friend for the last many years.

[00:05:36] She calls me yesterday, we’re chatting and she’s telling me about what she wants to do next year. And in the five minutes I mapped out her whole business, her whole model, mapped out how she’s gonna get to the revenue she wants, et cetera, et cetera. But I didn’t stop there. I said to her, “my friend, I’m happy to chat with you about your business anytime you want. What I know would support you more is if I had the privilege of you being my client again. Would you like to talk about that?”

[00:06:14] Now, I’m sharing this with you because people have all these beliefs. Oh, we can be friends, but I don’t want my friends to be my clients. Or, oh, we can be clients, but I don’t want my clients to get to know me more personally. I say to all that poppycock.

[00:06:38] I have a master’s in counseling psychology, and when I was in college getting my master’s, they talk a lot about the separation between counselor, therapist, and patient or client. And in the early years, I really stuck to that.

[00:07:01] Remember though that I said, and I’m hoping you’re embracing the guiding principle that, your business is supposed to be your bliss because part of what interferes with our bliss are the limiting beliefs or limiting attitudes that we have in our head or our business that we may not even be aware of.

[00:07:24] I could have said to myself, “oh, well, she’s my friend. She’s not gonna wanna be my client again.” Or I could have simply asked if she was up for a conversation. And what happened before the end of the conversation, she signed up to join our Speaker Mastermind Program to do some coaching. Why? Because she has known me for so long. She’s gotten massive value.

[00:07:49] I’m sharing this with you because you probably have people in your sphere, in your personal sphere, that think you’re amazing. You’ve never asked them to be your client because you have a belief that, well, we have this other relationship.

[00:08:05] Kind of like the attitude of, well, if you have a friend and then you just start to date your friend, it might interfere with your friendship. Yeah, it might interfere with your friendship. It also might become the best relationship of your life.

[00:08:19] You are super smart, but you cannot predict the future. That is why I’m inviting you to look at who maybe you wanna invite to have a conversation with you about being your client. Now you say, Caterina, what does this have to do with determination? Here’s what it has to do with determination.

[00:08:41] There are gonna be setbacks. There are gonna be disappointments. There are gonna be challenges du jour. There are gonna be clients and contracts and situations that you thought were a sure thing that are gonna fall through. And When that happens, do you let the disappointment, the discouragement, the self-doubt, the depression creep in, or do you replace it instantly with some determination?

[00:09:18] I remember some time ago I got a cancellation for one of our retreats. I was disappointed. I really wanted this gal to come. She was so great. I can’t remember now what the reason was. What I remember though is as soon as I hung up the phone, I asked myself, who can I get today to replace this person?

[00:09:46] And by the way, sidebar, the questions we ask ourselves determine the action we take, determine what we think about. Your questions are so important. The questions are strategy.

[00:10:06] I said to myself, “who can I have that would might potentially be a insta-yes?” and I looked back at my list because I have a list. Hopefully, you have a list of everybody I had talked to about coming to that retreat. and I found the name of a gal who had already said no, who I really wanted to come, and I didn’t call her and ask her if she wanted to come, even though she already said no.

[00:10:36] I called her and asked her this very important question that I want you to learn, and that was I said to her, “my friend, can we revisit this conversation about you joining us for the retreat?” Bing, bing, bing. She was a yes for the revisit and she was a yes for the retreat, and that is the day that I realized it doesn’t matter about the challenges dejour, the disappointment, the, the discouragement, the things that don’t go your way. What matters is the determination that you embrace when that happens.

[00:11:24] I want you to take a moment, my friend, right now, and I want you to reflect on how you’ve been doing your thing lately. When I say doing your thing, I mean doing your business. I don’t mean the actual service part of your business. If you’re a image professional or a life coach or a fitness trainer or a, a clairvoyant. I don’t mean the doing part of your business. I mean the business part of your business. The client acquisition, the client management, providing outstanding client care. Your own self-care, running your team, the financial management of your business.

[00:12:11] The business of your business. Is there any place where you’re feeling discouraged? And if there is, and I’m sure there is because we’ve all got them, because business is dynamic. And if you’re just like, if you can’t think of something, then ask yourself simply, where could you use an upgrade in your business?

[00:12:34] And I want you to shine some determination there.

[00:12:40] One of the things that I like to do, and I’m strongly, strongly, strongly encouraging you to do is to become diligent at tracking what’s going on in your business and paying attention to the data. And what do I specifically mean?

[00:13:06] You know, I’m sure you’re setting goals. The goals that you’re setting for how many clients you want each month, for how much revenue you want in the door, for how much revenue you want to sell. And the difference to remind you is that in the door means it’s in your bank account, it’s been collected. Sold means you might sell a program or, or a, a number of coaching sessions or you sell a membership for a year, you’re not getting paid for it all at once. It’s getting paid over a number of months. If you sell a thousand dollars program and you’re gonna get paid over the next five months, and you start the first payment today, that’s $200 in the door and a thousand dollars sold. You’re tracking all of that.

[00:14:03] The other thing that I track that I’m very much hoping you’re tracking is I track how many people I talk to in a week to invite to be my client, and how many of them actually become a client.

[00:14:20] Now, my personal record for how many calls in one week previously was 27. Last month, I broke that record and I did 29 sales conversations in one week. Very exciting. You know why it was very exciting? Because those 29 conversations corresponded with the best sales month I’ve ever had in my business.

[00:14:48] Now I’m sharing this with you because sometimes people say to me,” well, Caterina, what do you do when you get discouraged? What do you do when you get disappointed? What do you do when you are feeling depressed about what’s going on?”

[00:15:05] Here’s my answer. I sell something. I sell something. Now I don’t sell something to anybody. I sell something to someone who I know will get massive value from it.

[00:15:25] Let’s be very clear, you always sell with integrity. What does that mean? That means you only invite people to be your client who you know are gonna get massive value.

[00:15:36] The thing that I want you to embrace also though, is that you need to know the truth about how many people you need to talk to to get a client. Last Thursday, I talked to five people and I got five sales. That was a really exciting day. Well, you know what happened the next day? I talked to five people, and I got no sales.

[00:16:04] Now, the reason why I’m shining the spotlight here with you is that the easily discouraged or easily disappointed businesswoman might say, after five nos in a day, “this is a waste of time. Why am I doing this? I don’t wanna do this. I’m gonna stop doing this. I’m doing less of this.” Or she could say, “I gotta do six next time, or I gotta keep doing this” because the guiding principle, guiding principle alert, guiding principle alert is you keep doing what works even when it’s not working.

[00:16:50] And this is a place where I see for you to turn up and amplify your determination. Because I have often had people say to me, “Caterina, I invited 10 people to come to my workshop. Nobody came.” Well, usually you probably didn’t really personally invite them, you put a, put a post up here, there and everywhere.

[00:17:11] Remember for right now, invitation over promotion. You always personally invite people because it evokes a decision. Promotion, marketing, emails, social media. None of it is personal to that person. It informs them, but it does not evoke a decision.

[00:17:33] This is why I’m emphasizing and encouraging you to personally reach out to people and invite them to talk to you about your business, or if you can help them, invite them to come to your workshop or your event. That is what works.

[00:17:51] But here’s the truth. It doesn’t always work. It doesn’t always work. And sometimes it doesn’t work more than it works. Recently, I sent a note to maybe 30 people inviting them to come to an upcoming workshop I am doing. By the way, if you have not come to one of my free workshops that I do every month, I invite you to come. They’re always full of massive value. You will always get a boost. You will always have takeaways.

[00:18:32] On one particular day I invited 30 people. I think I got eight people responding, meaning even acknowledging the existence of my communication. Seven of them said “thank you. I’m already booked.” So basically no. One person of 30 said, “thank you so much. I followed the link and I signed up to come.”

[00:19:07] Now I’m asking you, if that was you, where would your attention be? Depresso for the 29 people that are not coming and didn’t even acknowledge your existence or the one person that was grateful and signed up.

[00:19:30] Well, I’m telling you that if you’re gonna be a thriving woman in business who is blissing in her business, you better be the gal that is blissing and grateful for that one gal that signed up. Because it does take a lot of invitations, asking a lot of people to become your client.

[00:19:56] Here’s the beautiful thing though, when you get clients, And you do a good job of delivering outstanding service to your clients, and you do a great job of client care and you over-deliver what they thought they were gonna get, and you appreciate your clients and you tell them you appreciate your business, they will keep coming back.

[00:20:24] And that means that you don’t have to replace your client base every year. Maybe you’re getting 25 or 30% new clients, but your business is still growing cause 70 to 80% of your clients are sticking with you.

[00:20:43] Here’s the thing about your business. Your business is taking place in a dynamic world, in the lives of your clients and potential clients that have a lot going on, most of which is more important than you and your business. And the sooner we recognize that everything that happens with our clients and potential clients, it’s not about us.

[00:21:17] I recently had a gal say to me, “Caterina, coming to your event was really hard for me. I didn’t like it. It didn’t resonate with me. It was my, I had a headache when I left.” Now, fortunately, that was the only time I’ve ever gotten feedback like that. 99% of the feedback I get is always how much massive value, outstanding, loved it, community was great, met some great people. Now maybe other people get a headache. They just don’t tell me.

[00:21:57] Here’s my point. Do I have my attention on that gal? Or do I have my attention on all the gals that were blissing that they came, or on all the gals that chose to become a client after that event? Where would your attention be?

[00:22:20] By the way, when I first started to speak many, many years ago, Usually I would be younger than my audience and older women at the time would come up to me sometimes and say to me, “may I give you some feedback on your talk?”

[00:22:46] And I decided very early, and I’m giving you this piece because I’m encouraging you to embrace it too. I decided very early that the short answer was no. I don’t take feedback from every Mary, Jane and Sheila. I do not like evaluations. Let me tell you why.

[00:23:11] I only want feedback from trusted sources. And I take feedback from trusted sources, my clients, my coach, my friends. These are trusted sources, not some gal in the audience who doesn’t like me as soon as I walk on stage, because I look like her husband’s ex-wife or because she really wants to be where I am.

[00:23:47] Trusted sources. As soon as you set this boundary of only taking feedback from trusted sources, everything becomes easier because speaking and selling, and being in business, it is vulnerable.

[00:24:09] It is vulnerable to ask someone if they want to be your client. It is vulnerable to get on a stage and share your message and your story. It’s vulnerable to be talking to you right now. I take feedback and I encourage you only to take feedback from trusted sources.

[00:24:34] Now, I’m happy to hear what you have to say, but guess what? If you wanna dis me, I’m probably not gonna give it the time of day. And part of this too is I recently got a note from somebody telling me something that I, uh, they thought I did wrong or blah, blah, blah. And I just say “thank you.” And if I think I should apologize, I do. Even when I don’t agree. Why? Because I don’t wanna engage. I don’t wanna go back and forth 10 times. I wanna move on.

[00:25:08] And the guiding principle here that I wanna invite you to embrace, is it more important to be right or is it more important to be in relationship? And I think it’s more important to be in relationship, or it’s more important to keep your party moving and not get stuck on something that doesn’t go well in the past.

[00:25:37] Jumping back to determination. You have goals that maybe you’ve had for a long time and you’re just not getting it, but you’re still determined to get your goal.

[00:25:55] For example, one of the things that I am still determined to do is to get fitter and stronger. One of the things I’ve done is I’ve made a commitment to three times a week work out via Zoom with my friend/VIP client, Stephanie Lueras. Three times a week we meet on Zoom and we lift weights together and we chat and we stretch and we talk about my health and fitness, and you know what? That’s three times a week that I would not be doing it on my own.

[00:26:45] Now, I work out at other times by myself, but this is three times a week that are absolutely happening because I have a date with someone important.

[00:27:00] The guiding principle here is put structures in place that force you to do what you wouldn’t do as much on your own. This is why when we have the Thrive at Sales class, we have people every week partner with one or two other people to get together and to say to each other what they’re gonna do in the next hour, and then have them go do it and report back at the end.

[00:27:34] They’re gonna book this many appointments, they’re gonna do this many reach-outs, they’re gonna have this many sales conversations.

[00:27:42] Structures create action. If there’s a place in your life or business where you’re not having the consistent action that you want, put a structure in place that forces you to have that consistent action. And that usually will involve a group or an individual that you have made a commitment to. Could be a coach, could be a class, it could be a friend.

[00:28:19] Right now, take a moment and ask yourself, where could you use a structure to support you?

[00:28:25] Every week I meet with my fabulous team. Got the most phenomenal team you ever met. In fact, you know what happened last night, my friend Angela, who is also my massage therapist, not to be confused with Angela, my marketing person. Angela came over to give me a massage. By the way, that’s a self-care structure that happens on a regular basis that is scheduled in advance. What structures do you have in place to support you for more self-care? She comes in, she’s got this big box, beautiful box, and it says on it “fit for a queen.” She says, “Caterina, this is for you.”

[00:29:19] She says, “it’s not just from me.” I open it up. There’s all these lovely presents in there, a candle, a notebook, a fancy cup. I’m, I’m touched. Oh, some bath bombs. I’m touched. She says, “Caterina, this is from your whole team. Plus this massage we’re doing tonight, your team is taking care of as a present to you.” I am blissing. I am grateful, and I’m mentioning this and I’m sharing this with you because it’s so nice when you feel genuinely appreciated as I did and as I do by my team.

[00:30:06] I meet with my team every week. I’ve done this for many years. I’ve met with my team every week. I mean, we talk at other times, but we have a team meeting to go over all of our projects and everything, and it’s only the last six months that I have been doing something very important.

[00:30:30] Whenever I schedule my team meetings, I now schedule an hour after the team meeting to implement all the to-dos that my team gives me or we come up with that I have to do and I ask myself, what was I doing for the last 28 years? I was trying to find time to do the to-do.

[00:30:57] I’m sharing this with you because I want you to reflect on what are those things that you know you’re gonna have to do and put them on your calendar even when you don’t know what you’re gonna do in that time.

[00:31:16] So here’s my point. Now I’ve got my team meetings for the year, but I also have an hour after the team meeting to do what I’m supposed to do after the team meeting rather than trying to find time to do my to-dos in the midst of my super full schedule.

[00:31:37] What about you? For example, I have on my calendar every quarter to meet with Kelly to go over the sales for the quarter to pay our commissions. That’s on the schedule for the year. Now, of course, if I wanna go speak that day or something, I can move that meeting, but it’s on the calendar.

[00:32:00] The same thing for sales. Do you have time blocked out for sales for the whole year? And do you have time blocked out for this other very important thing which is gonna support your determination, which is gonna support you thriving in your business, which is gonna support you being proactive versus reactive, which is gonna allow you to bliss more?

[00:32:24] And that is putting on your calendar every day, I recommend at the end of your day, time for thinking and planning.

[00:32:37] In thinking and planning time, you look at what’s coming up that you need to do. Getting ready, being proactive. You review your goals. You review if you have enough time set aside for sales, you review if you have enough self-care, time and personal time.

[00:32:57] Proactive versus reactive comes from thinking and planning time, and that is part of what I wanna invite you to do in your thinking and planning time is to ask yourself, “ Where can my business use more determination to get what I want for myself and my business and my life?”

[00:33:21] My friend, here’s what I know about you. You have massive value to bring. You are committed to personal growth. You’re committed to your business success. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be listening to this podcast.

[00:33:33] And I’m also hoping you’re committed to blissing in your business, and I’m inviting you today to also make the commitment to take any disappointment, take any discouragement, take any self-doubt, take any moments of depression, and turn them into determination.

[00:34:01] Because determination is the solution to whatever is stressing you in your business.

[00:34:12] My friend, join me for my next upcoming free workshop. Reach out to me on Facebook or LinkedIn or Insta. Become a part of our Thriving Women in Business public Facebook group.

[00:34:30] If you wanna soar more with your sales, with your speaking, with doing retreats, if you want some outstanding mentorship that comes along with an amazing community of like-minded, like-hearted women on a mission just like you, reach out, let’s connect. Because I do genuinely want you to bliss and thrive more in your business.

[00:34:58]

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Expand Your Fempire with Caterina Rando.