Expand Your Fempire Podcast #74 Transcript

Important Ideas to Be Better & Bliss More in Your Business in 2022

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: Hey my friends! Caterina Rando. I wanted to bring you some thoughts, some ideas, some musings on this new year and you, your business. My hope is that this year will be your absolute best year ever. My hope is that you’ll be blissing in your business through all 365 days, that you will enjoy being yourself, doing your thing, serving your people, and also massively monetizing your mastery.

[00:01:04] Now you may or may not know that I’ve been doing my thing for, I think it’s 28 years now. And I love doing my thing. What is my thing? I serve women on a mission, just like you, to support you to grow your business. My specific areas are speaking, strategy, and sales.

[00:01:28] I want to tell you something: the goal in your business is not perfection. I want to encourage you to pay attention and ask yourself how much do you pursue perfection? Because perfection is the enemy of mastery.

[00:01:51] Now, what do I mean that perfection is the enemy of mastery? What I mean is, is that when you are pursuing perfection, there’s this getting ready to get ready to begin, to think about getting going, to make sure it’s all right to make sure you look good to make sure it’s gonna get whatever result you want. When you pursue mastery. It’s completely different. Because you know you need your 10,000 hours, you know that you got to get started. You know, that the way to achieve mastery is to do it and do it and do it and do it and do it. And after every time you do it, whatever it is, speaking, selling, serving your clients. The more you do it, after every time you evaluate, you assess, you upgrade, you make changes. And here’s the other thing: you don’t beat yourself up.

[00:02:51] I want to tell you, when I talk to women entrepreneurs, just like you, and I hear them putting themselves down. “Oh, I’m no good at sales. I’m no good. I can’t do it. I’ve been doing this for so long, I’m just not getting it.”

[00:03:09] My friend, perfection is not required. Remember that. The goal is mastery. And how do we do that? By study, by support, by doing whatever it is that we seek to do. But right now, ask yourself: are you pursuing mastery every day, or are you pursuing perfection? Because that is a very depresso way to do your thing.

[00:03:36] That’s the first thing. The goal is mastery. And my desire for you as we move into this next year is you look at where do you want to have more mastery in your business.

[00:03:50] Now let me remind you. There’s five pillars in your business that are your job. Speaking, in the broad sense of the word. Speaking, teaching classes, doing clubhouse rooms, of course video, podcasts, all of that comes under speaking. And that’s really your job. Then there’s selling. Now, if you have a Salesforce, great. If you don’t my friend, look in the mirror, it’s you. You’re the sales team. Now I do encourage you to have some sales support, maybe some scheduling support that would make a huge difference for you in getting more sales.

[00:04:31] Speaking, selling, serving your clients. Providing outstanding –not only service in whatever your area is: coaching, consulting, graphic design– but also providing an excellent client experience, providing excellent client care. Now you may not do all the delivery, but some of that is definitely your job, and your job is of course the strategy part that goes along with it. Right?

[00:05:02] Speaking, selling, serving, strategy, and the last one is self care. And I’m hoping that you’re pursuing mastery in your self care that you want to be better and better and better with your self care. Because if you don’t have self care, you’re not going to have vitality to do your thing. And why am I talking about the five pillars? And by the way, I have a whole podcast on the five pillars. I’m giving you a quick refresher right now. The reason is because I want you to evaluate what are you doing that is not under your five pillars that is not your job that is taking away from mastery in those five areas.

[00:05:45] I’m hoping you are taking a look at this right now. Remember, I want you to bliss in your business. I hope you want to bliss in your business. And when you’re doing those things that are not your job that you’re not masterful at, that you don’t want to be masterful at, you’re probably taking too much time, you’re creating frustration, and you’re not focusing on your five jobs. Let’s look at that. Look at that right now. And by the way, guiding principle alert, guiding principle alert, only do what you seek to master in your business.

[00:06:24] Okay. That’s the first refresher I wanted to discuss with you as you move into this next year, to support you to really evaluate these five areas. And I’m going to tell you for myself in my business, I want to provide an even more outstanding client experience. We do already. I’m looking at everything we do and how can we do it better. How can we do our onboarding of clients better? How can we do our celebration and acknowledgement of clients better? Let me give you a little example. We just graduated some women from our Thrive at Sales program, the last group for the year. And one of the things we haven’t done –it’s a nine week class– is we haven’t given them graduation certificates. Well, one thing is we said okay, we’re going to give them graduation certificates. And you know what? I said to myself “Okay, well, it’s a nine week class, we’ll send them the certificates and we’ll send them a nice gift to go along with their certificates. And I’ll write a nice note, because of course I want to celebrate everyone individually. But you know, we’re going to skip the frames because they cost about $16 with the shipping.” But, you know, it was the day to send them out and I said to myself “Nope. I’ve got to do the frames”. You know why? Because it’s schlump-a-dinka not to do the frames. It’s like giving them certificates that they’re never going to put on the wall because they have to find a frame. We included the frames. I don’t want to do anything in my business that is off-brand. And for me not including frames was off brand. That’s an example of a little tweak that upgrades the client experience.

[00:08:14] Now, this is the first time we’ve sent out graduation certificates and graduation gifts when they finished their nine week class. Of course, we do that for our more advanced programs, but now it’s going to be standard operating procedure for all our nine week classes, because I’m looking at what is all the little things I can do to upgrade our client experience. We’re going to start this month when we have new clients, having a new client orientation every month. We have, of course, all these bonuses and benefits. We want to make sure they take advantage, they know how to use them, they know where to access everything. We’re updating our client portal. We haven’t had it, we’ve used Facebook groups to put content. We’ve had a portal in the past, but now we’re getting a new, fancy, more investment in my business, client portal to enhance the client experience. I want to ask you: look at those five pillars. Which one do you want to achieve even more mastery in as you move in to this next year? This is something for you to reflect on. Now, here’s more.

[00:09:26] I want you to look at how do you want to be better in your business? I’m going to give you an example from my friend I was talking to yesterday that I think is very important. I was talking with my friend Peggy, and I have asked her if it’s okay for me to discuss, and she said yes. And by the way, Peggy O’Neill is very good friend of mine. She’s an outstanding speaker. She is one of the guests on my podcast. If you look at our podcast page at caterinarando.com, you can see my interview with her. She is a diversity speaker. She has an app called Tap for Joy. And one of the things about Peggy is that she’s a little person. She stands, I believe, about three feet, eight inches. Not an average sized person, a little person. And we were talking yesterday and she was saying that one of her friends said to her “you know, Peggy, you may want to let go of this idea of having an average size boyfriend.” Now, let me tell you something. Peggy is a goddess. She has more vitality, more love, she is beautiful, than most people you’ll ever meet. She brights up every room, every conversation she has. And I got very upset when Peggy shared with me what her friend had shared with her, because here is a guiding principle that I want to give you. The guiding principle is: no one has the right to step on your dream. Did you hear that? Nobody has the right step on your dream. How does this lady know whether or not Peggy can have an average size boyfriend? How the hell does she know? She doesn’t know. She’s projecting her own limiting beliefs on this amazing woman. I got very upset because I have seen this over and over and over where people are not accepting, by some evaluation, big dreams or desires or goals of others.

[00:11:48] You don’t have a crystal ball my friend. Your job is to support people in their dreams and their goals. And I’m saying this to you because you have the ability to catapult people with your amazingness. I want you to check with yourself. Are you ever not 100% supporting people’s dreams. I’ve had clients, I thought to myself “no way this mom was going to do this.” I thought to myself, I didn’t say out loud. And she said “Hey, I want to do this. I want to double, triple, quadruple my revenue. I want to do my retreat. I want to get my group program started.” Even though she’s never done it before she sets a big goal. Guess what? I’ve been amazed over and over and over by what women can achieve. And right now I am going to remind you we have a whole podcast on this, on the steps to create massive change. Because here’s the thing: it’s okay for you to want whatever you want. Your desires are valid. Did you hear that my friends? Your desires are valid. Even if no Mary Jane or Sheila has ever done it and you want to do it, go for it because sometimes if you don’t get that, you’ll get something else amazing along the way.

[00:13:20] Many years ago, I was in a speech contest. I’m just getting started, I’m in my twenties. I’m in a speech contest called the Young Careerist Contest and there was three people in the contest and I came in second, and that meant that I didn’t get to go to the next level for the region. But you know what? I was at the conference where they were having the region ladies compete. Well, guess what? They were supposed to be five region ladies there, none of them showed up. One of them got delayed. One of them moved out of town. And they said “Catarina, will you give your speech just as an exhibition?” Well, I said, okay, even though I was super scared. By the way, guiding principal alert, guiding principle alert. Be willing to be uncomfortable. And I want to ask you right now to check in with yourself. Are you, and have you been, willing to be uncomfortable in your business and where is it necessary for you to be more uncomfortable? And you know what happens when you’re uncomfortable? Bliss, bliss, and more bliss!

[00:14:35] I did my talk that day as an exhibition. It wasn’t a very good talk. It wasn’t the talk I had done before, and I did it. And the idea of me simply doing it was enough to make me bliss. You know what else? I’m going to tell you something more on a personal side. On New Year’s Eve I went to a virtual singles event. I figured “Hey, I don’t even have to leave my house. Might as well go to this virtual singles event.” You do it on your phone. It’s this app called Ever. And they have lots of online virtual events where they have people that come in front of you and you have a chat with them. And then they move on. It’s like eight minutes, like speed dating. I guess there was only 10 people at the event, but no one came on my screen to talk to me. Now, I’m going to tell you something. On the one hand that was kind of depressing that nobody came and talked to me. But on the other side, I was blissing that I was willing to go and show up and take some action to create what I want on the romantic side of my life.

[00:15:51] Now, I share that with you, because I do believe that action is the antidote to despair. Back to my story I started to tell you. I give my talk as an exhibition because the other ladies are not there. I get a call a week later, they said “Caterina, the person who was supposed to go to the state competition can’t go, will you go?” You know what? I’m starting to feel now like it’s my destiny to win this speech competition. Well, long story short, I came in second at that competition. But guess what? I got something so much better than whatever the prize was because I had been willing to be uncomfortable and I proved to myself that I’m a halfway decent speaker. And that gave me fuel to keep going with my speaking. I’m sharing this with you because it is your willingness to be uncomfortable that will support you to get where you want to go. As long as –super tip alert, super tip alert– as long as you’re not attached to a particular outcome, your intention is to simply take the action to move towards it, regardless of the results.

[00:17:11] Okay. So I’m going to remind you right now of the steps to create massive change. And if you did create new year’s resolutions, these are the ingredients to support you with that. If you have goals for this year, which I know you do, because you’re a high achieving woman, otherwise you probably wouldn’t be listening to this right now. Here it is. Here’s the steps to create massive change. Ongoing support. Ongoing guidance. A structure that creates accountability, like a group, or a coach, or even a peer friend that you’re meeting with monthly. Ongoing support, ongoing guidance, a structure that creates accountability. And it creates a very important thing: a place to celebrate your wins. Ongoing support, ongoing guidance, structure, accountability, opportunity to celebrate. And also of course, community. If you don’t have community, I am sorry for you because community is a necessary ingredient. What happens when you have community? You share resources, you share ideas. Sometimes people have the exact solution you’ve been looking for. You’ve been looking and looking and looking and you simply mentioned in your community “Hey I’m looking for this”, and bing bing bing the solution is now in your lap.

[00:18:49] Let me go through these one more time. Let’s see if I missed any. Ongoing support, ongoing guidance, a structure that creates accountability, a place to celebrate, of course, having a community, and here’s the other thing. And this is one that we don’t talk about. Ongoing encouragement. Encouragement is important. Encouragement is not just for kids. Encouragement is for all of us to move forward. And I’m hoping that you have all these ingredients in your professional and personal life. And if you don’t, I’m going to make a more overt invitation that I usually do. If you don’t, my friends, come talk to me. Because I have the most amazing community of like-minded like-hearted women on a mission. And I have so much mentorship and support for you to catapult you towards where you want to go. You know what I woke up to this morning? A text from one of the ladies in our community. She said “Caterina, thank you for all your support for the last three years and all of your contribution to my life.” And by the way, that makes me bliss, because that’s what it’s all about.

[00:20:12] As you look at how you want to be different this next year, I strongly encourage you to be more giving. Giving looks good on you. Giving looks great on your business. And what does more giving look like? Here’s what I want you to know. Your business is not just a business. Your business is a platform for you to create change, for you to support communities and causes that you care about. My fabulous sister, some of you know who she is, her name’s Angela Rando. She owns a deli and catering and cafe, Italian cafe, in San Francisco. I ran this cafe for eight years way back when. My sister just raised about $20,000 for homeless families, eight homeless families, in the neighborhood that her cafe is in. Their children go to the school that is half a block from my sister’s cafe. Do you know what she did? She did a GoFundMe. She did videos and pictures and a whole social media situation. And you know what happened? She had customers come in and give her anonymously multiple thousands of dollars. One customer has been coming to her cafe for years gave her $5,000 anonymously to help these families.

[00:21:54] Here’s what I want you to get. When you decide that you are going to use your business for some good, for some giving, do you know what you’re doing? You’re giving your clients and your community opportunities to give. We did our last event in December, our Expand Your Fempire Summit, and we raised money for Girls Up Uganda. And you know what? In September, we raised $9,000 for Sakhi for Girls’ Education. And I thought a lot of the people were the same, for sure we’re not going to get anywhere near that. We raised almost $12,000. And by the way, my contribution was $500. So it didn’t come out of my pocket. It was from the community. You can use your business as an opportunity to create massive change in the communities and the lives of the people and the places and the causes that you want to uplift. And I’m hoping that you have standard operating procedures in your business for more giving. Give you a couple examples. We of course do fundraising at each one of our larger events, at our summits. During the year, though, when things come up, I’m an insta-yes. Like this last year with the refugee families from Afghanistan, one of my military moms on my team, she was getting people to donate things for the Afghan families. We put it all over the place. Yes. Let’s support our Angela and her fundraising. That’s what happens when you have community. And you know what? My community helped so much. Because why? Because giving is standard operating procedure around here.

[00:24:03] Now, let me tell you another standard operating procedure. If one of my clients asks for support with a cause, I’m an insta-yes. Now, depending on what’s going on, the check might be bigger or smaller, but it’s standard operating procedure to be giving when our clients ask. I want you to ask yourself. Is there something you would really like to make a difference in this next year? One of the things you could do, everybody is you could do a workshop and you could say, Hey, my friends, a hundred percent of the admission fee for this workshop is going to go to XYZ costs. Or 50%. You could do all kinds of online events. Debbie Campbell who’s in our community. She does blingo once a quarter where we go and play bingo and we win bling, and the admission fee, a hundred percent goes to a different charity. That’s a standard operating procedure for her business around giving. How about for you? What standard operating procedures do you have around giving? There’s a lifetime supply of people to help and use your business for good. This is going to support you in blessing in your business. I want you to bliss more in your business. Giving and using your business as a platform for giving is going to support you in blissing more in your business.

[00:25:40] After so many years in business, after having so many skills around speaking and selling and serving, now what I’m looking at is how to do it even more masterfully. And that’s what I want you to look at. And I’m hoping, by the way, that this whole discussion on giving, that you are having an abundant perspective as we discuss this. That you’re not thinking “well Caterina, that’s fine for you, but you know, I can’t pay all my bills.” Let me tell you something my friend. Super transparent. You may or may not know that my marriage was significantly financially devastating on me and my business. You know what though? For the five years that I was digging myself out of a significant financial hole. I never diminished my philanthropy. Giving is good for your soul. It is good for your heart. It will make you bliss. And the more you give, the more you are telling the universe, and yourself, that you have an endless supply and that there is an endless supply for you. And I’m hoping, by the way, that you know that there is a lifetime supply of people to serve. There is a lifetime supply of wealth and abundance and prosperity for you when you are a woman entrepreneur. Because you know what? You can give a speech and come home with clients. You can have a conversation and get a client. You can collaborate with other women. You absolutely have the opportunity to create a lot of economic ease for yourself and your family. And if that message doesn’t feel right to you, meaning that sounds good but it’s not working for you right now, then you probably are not having those ingredients that we talked about to create massive change. You might have a couple of them, but not all of them. Ongoing support, ongoing guidance, accountability, community, a structure that makes it all happen, opportunity for encouragement and celebration. This is how you create massive change.

[00:28:14] And by the way, let me just debunk something here. You know, I know you’re super smart, and you might think, “well, hey Caterina I’m super smart. I can figure it out.” Yeah, my friend, you’re super smart. You can figure it out. But guess what? Why bother when you could get some support and some guidance from somebody that already has achieved mastery in the area that you’re seeking to achieve it? Now what that’s going to do is accelerate your success. One of my clients who she’s not with me anymore, because guess what she has moved into her — what does she call it?– fun sizing of her business and her life. Meaning she works I think two days a week these days, because she has created financial abundance and ease for herself. She’s living her ideal life. When we started working together, she said “yeah, Caterina, I knew I could figure it out, but I figured if I worked with you, I would get there a lot faster”. And that’s exactly what happened. I do not want you to have any struggle in your business. And if you have struggle in your business, my friend, I have a message for you. I hope you’re open to hearing it. Here it is. If you have struggled in your business, you are settling for struggle. Because if you have a struggle in your business, you probably have had a lot of struggle for a long time. And in order to create bliss and ease and financial flow in your business, you got to do something different.

[00:29:51] Sometimes, it’s very funny, sometimes I’m inviting someone to join the Thrive at Sales Class, the nine week class that we do that really supports you in moving towards mastery with your selling. Authentic selling: no scripts, no pain points, all about getting clear on what you want in terms of your client, getting clear on your systems, inviting people to talk to you, building influence. And sometimes people say to me “but Caterina, I would love to do your class, but I absolutely can’t afford it.” Well, guess what, sweetheart, when you absolutely can’t afford it, that’s when you really need it. Because clearly you’re not having financial flow in your business. If you can’t sell, you can’t serve. If you can’t sell, you can’t give from an overflowing cup. I really want you to move towards mastery with your selling. And I have to use the word selling because then like you know what I’m talking about, but selling is looking at how you can serve someone. That’s what it is. And that is what I want for you. I want you to serve with ease. I want you to have financial abundance. I want you to bliss in your business. And if that is not what’s going on for you, let’s have a conversation and see if myself or one of the amazing women in my community can support you.

[00:31:14] By the way, I want to mention –oh, excitement alert, excitement alert. Starting the first Monday in January, we will be having a Clubhouse room at 3:00 PM every Monday, 3:00 PM. Pacific time, on blissing in your business. I will be there with a couple of co-mods each week, other amazing women in business, and we will talk about different hot topics about productivity, about money, about social media, all kinds of things, to support you to bliss more in your business. That’s Mondays at 3:00 PM Pacific in Clubhouse, our Thriving Women in Biz Club. And if you’re not a member of our Clubhouse Thriving Women in Biz Club, I invite you to join us. Also on Fridays at three o’clock we’re moving the time to three o’clock Pacific, we have our wind down and wrap up for the week where you can share your wins, where we network, and I promise you every time you come to any of our clubhouse rooms, you will leave more uplifted than when you showed up. We are all about being rising women that are lifting all the rising women around us. Also, let me remind you. Hopefully you’re already in our Thriving Women in Biz Facebook group. Hopefully you are downloading on a regular basis. You have subscribed to our Expand Your Fempire Podcast. I’m also hoping you have downloaded our Expand Your Fempire app, which is free for your phone. And I will give you a advanced secret alert that we are going to be having a contest to have a free Thrive at Sales class through the app. So you want to download the app. So you’ll get the notification about our contest. And I have a couple of free workshops coming up my friends. If you have not been to my Achieving Sales Bliss workshop, two of those coming up in January, one in February. I want to support you to thrive with your speaking, with your selling, with your strategy, so that you are blissing in your business.

[00:33:31] As we wrap up, here’s what I want to tell you. You, my friend, have massive value to bring. There is a lifetime supply of people to serve.

[00:33:43] I encourage you to be willing to be uncomfortable. To forget about perfection and pursue mastery in those five areas we discussed, speaking, selling, serving, strategy, and self care, so that you can sell more, which means you get to serve more, and most importantly, you get to give more and uplift more lives.

[00:34:09] This is Caterina Rando, wanting you to have your best year ever in 2022. Sending you some love, and call on me anytime for any reason to support you, to fulfill your mission. Bing bing bing! Love to you, and I cannot wait to be with you again in one of our many platforms: Clubhouse, Facebook group, in our community, et cetera, et cetera. Okay my friends, ciao.

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