Expand Your Fempire Podcast #48 Transcript

Mindset Upgrades to Thrive More in Your Business

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.

[00:00:25] Caterina Rando: This is Caterina Rando, and I am welcoming you back to another episode of the Expand Your Fempire podcast. I am blissing to be with you today, and we are going to talk about something very important that honestly, I cannot believe we have not discussed before. We are going to talk today about mindset.

[00:00:54] Now first, what is mindset? Your mindset is a set of ideas, notions, assumptions, beliefs that you have that you have held for a long time. Some of what you may not even be aware that you are operating your whole life with, based on your upbringing, based on your experience, based on your culture.

[00:01:21]We have a particular fixed mindset for all aspects of our life. We have a fixed mindset around our health, around relationships, around money. Today, what we’re going to talk about is your mindset around selling sales and scaling your business.

[00:01:45] We will talk about other mindsets coming up because this is really the foundation work for you to not only build your Fempire, to thrive and bliss everywhere in your life.

[00:02:00] And as we take this time together in this episode, I want you to reflect on what we discuss. I want you to think about your disposition in relation to what I discuss with you, because I am hoping that in our time together, we can adjust your mindset to support you more.

[00:02:25] Maybe to have you take different action. Maybe to have you take some risks or even do some things that would make you uncomfortable that you have not been willing to do before, knowing that you’re going to get amazing results, or at least it’s possible that you will get amazing results.

[00:02:48]I’m going to tell you also a little bit about my mindset.

[00:02:51]I believe that the world, life, the universe, has my back. I believe that good things happen. I believe that not good things don’t really happen in my life in my world. I believe people are good. yeah, I believe people are good. I know that there’s bad apples out there. I believe that people want to help people.

[00:03:21] I believe that my mission on the planet is to uplift women economically and that the more I help women, the more they help other people and uplift themselves, their families and their communities.

[00:03:37] These are not only beliefs I have, these are ideas that are ingrained in who I am. I want you to look at what are the ideas that you have ingrained in who you are.

[00:03:54] It’s very interesting, at the time of this taping, we are moving out of the pandemic lifestyle. Things are starting to open up. I am oftentimes in conversations with women in a group setting or in a one-on-one setting via Zoom, via Clubhouse. And I’m hearing people talk and I’m hearing them blame the pandemic.

[00:04:21] Well, you know what?  It sounds exactly the same as when people were blaming the recession or blaming 9-11 for their business, their life going a skew. And I am not diminishing that, yes, this has been a very challenging time for many households. For many businesses.

[00:04:48] And I also know, because I’ve seen it myself with the many clients that I’ve had the privilege to work with and support since before the pandemic started to now, as we’re moving out of it. And what I know is that everyone who did not say, “This is going to take me out.” Instead said, “I can thrive through this,” has in fact done it. That is a mindset.

[00:05:18] I remember I was talking to a gentlemen. He helps companies with their credit card processing. That’s his service that he sells credit card processing. And of course, this is something, every small business needs, every business needs. And I was talking to him a few months back and he’s saying, “Well, you know, since the pandemic started, business has been really down.”

[00:05:44]Guess what? I have three ladies that I know, one of whom we do our own credit card processing with, whom have been thriving during the pandemic. Because just because you can’t go out and knock on somebody’s business door doesn’t mean that you cannot do just as much, if not more business, as we have all learned through doing business virtually.

[00:06:13] Here’s my point: when you have a mindset that everything’s going to be okay. You look for how to make everything okay. If you have a mindset for “this pandemic or this recession or this, whatever is going to bring my business down…” Hello, my friend, that is what you are going to see in your business and your life.

[00:06:42]Henry Ford, the creator of Ford cars. He said something like, “if you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.”

[00:06:55] And I want to ask you if you’re operating your business from the perspective of, “I am going to thrive. My businesses can thrive. We can address any challenge. We can address any problem. We can get through this. We can make it work. We can find solutions.”

[00:07:16] Or if you’re letting the challenge du jour take you out? Because my friend business is dynamic. There will often be the challenge du jour, sometimes you have solved it by the end of the day. Sometimes it takes you days or weeks. Doesn’t mean you cannot get through it. We all have these challenges.

[00:07:44]Years ago when I was a young entrepreneur owning my cafe and catering business, really with little business acumen to speak of, I joined my chamber of commerce in San Francisco, where I would later go on to run many of the groups and be on the board of directors and on the executive committee with all the vice presidents of all the big corporations in town.

[00:08:15] I learned a lot at the chamber of commerce. My first friend, really, and mentor was a gentleman named Irv Spivak.

[00:08:26] Irv Spivak was the kind of person that made everyone feel important. When you were with him, you felt that he was fully present with you, that he cared that you met him.

[00:08:44] I was Irv’s friend for many, many years. When he passed, his friends and I, we all got in an argument at his Memorial. We were arguing over the fact that we all considered ourselves to be his very best friend. This is no exaggeration. There was a bevy of people gathered together. All of us in his apartment. There were people younger than him. People older than him. And all of us thought we were his absolute best friend.

[00:09:23]Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that how everyone in our life should feel?

[00:09:30] Now I tell you about my friend Irv because he had in his home, the optimist creed. And if you have not read the optimist creed, you want to look it up. You want to print it out.

[00:09:45] You want to embrace it because it’s all about your mindset. That you expect good things are going to happen to you. That you commit to treating everyone with importance. That you are thrilled for other people’s successes. This is all about mindset, my friend, and I encourage you to embrace an optimist, positive disposition and mindset.

[00:10:15]My friendship with Irv is one of the hugest gifts of my life. I’m going to tell you something I did, that I consider to be one of the greatest achievements of my life. My friend Irv was HIV positive. Even so he was always, as I said, welcoming, loving, optimistic.

[00:10:43] At some point, though, many people he knew started to die from HIV. And for the first time in Irv’s life, in my many years of being his friend, I saw him get depresso, and it broke my heart because he’s the kind of guy that lifted everyone else up. I said to myself, “I’m going to do something for my friend Irv.”

[00:11:19]Irv loved the botanical gardens in San Francisco. He loved cigars. He loved to take all his friends when they were visiting from out of town to the botanical gardens and he would give them a tour and tell them about all the plants that were there from all over and flowers from all over the world.

[00:11:42] He would boast about the botanical gardens as if it was his own gardens. And if he met people that were not from San Francisco, he would invite them to go and get a tour with him and spend the afternoon on a Sunday, walking, smoking cigars. Usually he would take everybody to dim sum.

[00:12:06] He loved the botanical gardens. Well, I was telling my friend Celia that I wanted to get Irv, a bench, a Memorial bench, you know, the kind of bench you get for people when they pass away. Only, I didn’t want to wait till he passed away. I wanted to get this bench for him while he was still alive.

[00:12:29] I called the botanical gardens. They told me they had no benches available. I said, “do you have a waiting list?” They said, “no, we don’t have a waiting list.” Well, one day while I was taking a walk in the neighborhood with my friend Celia, who’s a lifelong friend who also lives in the neighborhood. I was telling her I wanted to get this bench.

[00:12:49] Do you know what she told me? She told me that her father was on the board of directors of the botanical gardens. I’m blissing, as I tell you this, because part of mindset is knowing that you can make something happen and you believe you can make it happen. Even when you have no idea how you’re going to make it happen.

[00:13:11] I’m going to say that again, even when you have no idea how you’re going to make it happen.

[00:13:17] But you get this idea in your head of what you want to do, and there is no stopping you. And there is no barrier high enough. Because your determination and your focus on what you want to create and your knowing that you can do it, is greater than any obstacle.

[00:13:38] My friends, this is mindset. And I’m telling you, what is it that you want to create that you’re having a challenge with? Well, part of it is your determination to make it happen. That will make it happen.

[00:13:54] I said to my friend Celia about my bench I wanted. I couldn’t believe it. She said her dad was on the board of directors.

[00:14:01] Her dad made a call or two. He found out who was the person in charge. He went and asked them when they were going to do the benches. He got me to make sure that the person let me know when they were opening up for some benches. This bench cost $5,000. I got a hundred people, a hundred people to donate $50.

[00:14:28] Tom, who was another friend of Irv’s. We went to Irv’s house one night and I distracted Irv. I was giving him a shoulder massage, distracting him. So Tom could tap into his computer and get all of his contacts so that we could reach out to all his friends and ask them to participate in this bench project.

[00:14:53] Everybody was an insta- yes, because everybody loved Irv. We not only gave him a bench in Golden Gate Park and had a big celebration, Mark Leno, who is, I believe a state Senator now in California, Mark Leno made it Irv Spivak day. I knew Mark from the San Francisco chamber of commerce board of directors.

[00:15:19] We were at city hall one day and we were meeting at his office. Barely knew him. He barely knew who I was. I waited till everybody else left so that I could make this special request of him. And he was a insta-yes. 

[00:15:34] Let me tell you something, you ask for what you want.

[00:15:38] I was scared on this day to make this request of Mark Leno.

[00:15:42]I was shy and not sure if he would help. Not only did he make it Irv Spivak Day, he came to Golden Gate Park at the botanical gardens and he bestowed this certificate on Irv himself. It was quite a special day. People flew in from all over the country to celebrate this friend on this special day.

[00:16:11] We surprised Irv. He thought he was just going for another walk in the botanical gardens. Instead, his friends gathered, we had a very special day. It was his birthday and it changed his life.

[00:16:26] The other thing we did is we put together a love book. What is a love book? Everybody put on the page in writing, we put it in a binder, why they loved Irv. This book, the love book as we called it, he said he couldn’t even read more than one page at a time  because it was so heartwarming for him.

[00:16:55] I’m telling you all this, because what this day did for Irv was it so shifted his mindset back to gratitude, back to all the amazing gifts in his life even though he had lost many of his wonderful friends.

[00:17:16]And my friend Irv has been gone now for maybe six years. And I am so glad that I took the time to put together this special bench project for Irv. And when you go to the botanical gardens in golden gate park, there’s a little courtyard to the left as you enter right behind the library. And there’s a bench there and it says “for Irv Spivak who lives, loves, and laughs well.”

[00:17:56]I invite you, you, if you’re ever in San Francisco at the beautiful botanical gardens to sit on that bench, be grateful for all the huge gifts in your life, and ask yourself, who do you want to celebrate that has been good to you?

[00:18:15]As I said, I consider this special bench for Irv with the celebration and the love book one of my greatest accomplishments of life. Celebrating one person on one day, it did change everything for his life because it shifted his mindset back to where it used to be.

[00:18:40]I’m inviting you right now to recognize that who you are is monetizable And what I mean by that is that being your amazing self -connecting with people, talking to people. Operating with integrity, meaning you’re never going to sell anything to anybody that you know you can’t serve, or you know, it’s not a match for.

[00:19:13] If you are always going to operate with integrity, which I know you are, and you’re always going to treat people with respect and you’re always going to listen, aren’t you doing people a disservice by not offering them your amazing services or products that can support them?

[00:19:38] Now everybody’s an adult, if your clients are adults. They can say, no, they can say this is not right for me, but if they don’t know what you got, how can they embrace it?

[00:19:54] They can’t. That’s our job. That’s our job to invite people to work with us.

[00:20:06] And by the way, here’s another mindset that I have. I make the assumption that the answer is yes, until I hear a no.

[00:20:21] I don’t know if I’ve said this on this podcast. I’m going to say this here. I’m a phenomenal new client. She’s coming on our Bliss Retreat. That’s a $5,500 sale. I met her at a speech about six years ago. Thought she was fabulous. She is fabulous, bright light, great personality.

[00:20:46] I knew at the time, I know today, I absolutely can help her scale her business. She’s come to some workshops. Never though has been a client.

[00:20:57]I ran into her on clubhouse some weeks back. And what did I do? I sent her a Facebook message. I made a phone call. Didn’t hear anything. I sent her another Facebook message. Made another phone call. By the way that’s  called the double dip. When you make a call and you do a secondary method, like a direct message or personal email or a personal text.

[00:21:22]I did six rounds of this. I did six rounds of this double dipping call, Facebook message. Varying my communication, what I was saying. Ask me how many times she got back to me, the answer would be zero. My friends. This is what I mean by the answer is yes until you hear a no.

[00:21:50] Was I disappointed? Absolutely. Here’s what I know. She, like everyone else on the planet, is not walking around thinking Caterina is their priority of life. Recognize that it’s not personal when people don’t get back to us. In fact, sometimes they’re thinking about working with us. And they’re ruminating over it in their head before they get back to us, but then something else takes their attention and they forget. Or they still intend to get back, but they don’t, that’s our job to keep reaching out.

[00:22:27] She does not get back to me once with my six rounds of follow-up. Then on a Saturday she calls me. I see her name on my phone. I instantly pick up. I was about to give a speech. I could not chat with her. Then we made a phone date for later that day and shock of shocks. She signed up for $5,500 something. Her first sale with me.

[00:22:57]This is an amazing thing, because it was proof that no response does not mean no. And by the way, my friends that’s mindset. You’re operating with the assumption that no response does not mean no.

[00:23:17] Remember I said at the top of our time together, that’s what mindset is. It’s assumptions. It’s beliefs, it’s notions ideas that are dictating our behavior.

[00:23:32] If you are operating with the assumption that you have massive value to bring, if you’re operating with the assumption that you will be of great support and help to your clients, if you’re operating with the assumption that the answer is yes, until you hear a no, you will do more reach outs, you will invite more people to be your clients.

[00:24:07]Are you operating this way? Do you have certainty? Meaning cento per cento, a hundred percent belief that you are masterful and awesome at what you do for your clients. If you are, that is mindset.

[00:24:34]And I’m hoping that in our discussion today, you are seeing some opportunities to adjust your mindset so that you can sell more and scale more.

[00:24:50] Let me tell you another thing I have heard way too many times. Gals have said to me, “Caterina, I don’t set sales goals because then I don’t get them and I am unhappy and I get discouraged.”

[00:25:05]If you don’t have goals, then you cannot make a plan to support those goals. And you cannot evaluate the effectiveness of your plan to improve on it, to continue to do better.

[00:25:26]What we focus on, we can improve. What we document, we can improve. What we track, we can improve.

[00:25:36] Here’s another mindset thing. I track what I do in my business. I pay attention to the results I get. I document the results. Why? Because I’m like a scientist or a researcher looking for the right solution.

[00:25:59] Sometimes people say to me, ” well, Caterina, will this work, will this work? Should I do this?” And I say, “test it, test everything, get the data that tells you how effective or not effective you have been.”

[00:26:18] But here’s the other thing, I operate with the mindset that whatever we do can be upgraded. Can be improved. And I’m hoping that that is your mindset as well.

[00:26:35] I got to give you a couple more mindset things for you to look at. One is this ridiculous idea that patience is a virtue. Are you kidding me? Patience is not a virtue for the woman entrepreneur. This is what getting ready to get ready to begin to think about getting going looks like.

[00:27:03] Let me tell you something. I am impatient to reach more women on the planet. I am impatient to uplift more lives. I am impatient to fill our upcoming retreat and our speaker mastermind and our next Thrive at Sales program. I am impatient to do all these things.

[00:27:30] And my impatience causes me to be looking at how can I do it better? How can we do it better? Meaning me and my team. What can I get off my plate so that I have more time to talk to amazing gals about whether or not our work is the right match for them?

[00:27:53] Impatience is one of the sources of innovation in your business. Don’t be apologizing or afraid to be impatient. I’m asking you to make this shift in mindset.

[00:28:11] Here’s another one. You or some of your gal pals that are women entrepreneurs may be hurting themselves in their businesses because they are caring so much about getting it right or even perfect. Perfection is not required.

[00:28:36] Did you hear that? Perfection is not required? One of the things I do Fridays at five o’clock Pacific, you may or may not know, is that I host a room on Clubhouse in our Thriving Women in Biz club.

[00:28:53] By the way, you, my friend are invited. Please join in.

[00:28:58] Because another mindset thing is that we have a community culture and not a celebrity culture, meaning it’s not all about me. When we do this room, I have different ladies comod with me. And run the different rounds of questions. And facilitate everyone sharing. And I always like to call on someone who has not done it before and to have the new people do it because I believe it’s good for them to dive right in.

[00:29:39] And the other night we’re doing the room Friday night, wrap up, wins, sharing wisdom. And I call on a gal who I know had not run a round before. And I said, “Hey, my friend,” I said her name. I said, “Hey, you want to run the round?” She was an Insta -yes. Then we Facebook message back and forth after. She tells me “Caterina, not only was that the first time I ran the round, I’d never even been in a clubhouse room before.”

[00:30:12] That’s how you get good- by diving in. No getting ready to get ready, to begin to think about getting going. And what did I say to her in my Facebook message after I said you did a great job. I said, “perfection is not required.”

[00:30:29] In fact perfection is boring. Who wants to work with perfect people? I’m hoping that this is a mindset assumption and disposition and belief that you’re operating your business with.

[00:30:45] Let’s take a deep breath. My friend, I want you to thrive in your business. I want you to bliss in your business and after our time together tonight, I want you to look at the assumptions you have. Because your business is supposed to be your bliss.

[00:31:07] And by the way, having a mindset that business is hard and hard work and struggle. That’s a mindset. You can do your business with ease. You can do your business with bliss. You can be massively monetizing while blessing and having ease in your business and having fun. That’s what I want for you. That is mindset.

[00:31:33] I want you to think about what you’re going to do based on our time together today. Feel free to send me an Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin message. By the way, don’t email me. I’m not email queen. I love direct messaging.

[00:31:47]I’ve already invited you to join us on Clubhouse. Join our Thriving Women in Biz club. By the way, I want to give a shout out to Jennifer, the fabulous stylist in Israel who made my day last week when she told me how much she enjoys this podcast. And then she double made my day by showing up at my workshop the next day.

[00:32:09] We have workshops. Free workshops every month go to caterinarando.com. Come, and I promise you, you will get so much massive value at those workshops. I will bliss to see your smile on the screen. And I look forward to doing everything I can to support you.

[00:32:30] Listen to the other episodes of this podcast, Expand Your Fempire. Make sure you’ve downloaded our Expand Your Fempire app. Join our Facebook group, hang out with us on Clubhouse, because I want you to know that a rising woman lifts all the women around her. And you, my friend, are a rising woman.

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