The Top 3 Things That Changed My Entrepreneurial World

Setting sail on an entrepreneurial voyage often comes with a treasure map scribbled in lessons and discoveries, and I, Dr. Griselda Martinez, am no exception. In the latest episode of our podcast, I recount an odyssey that goes beyond mere business achievements to unearth the profound self-awareness and authenticity that have become my compass in business ownership. With every anecdote, I aim to inspire listeners, particularly women, to confidently chart their own course in the world of entrepreneurship.

This particular journey is not just mine to share but a shared narrative of courage over fear and an alignment of personal values with professional endeavors. As I walk you through the key lessons that have been pivotal to my success, you'll find that owning your unique abilities and understanding the core values that resonate with you can lead to business success and personal fulfillment. So, if you're ready to unlock the power of your individuality and embrace the opportunities that fear often masks, let this episode guide the entrepreneurial success you can achieve.

📣 Get in touch with me: 

💻 Web: drgriselda.com

💼 LinkedIn: griseldatmartinez

🌐 Instagram: unexpectedlysuccessfultheshow

📚 Facebook: Dr. Griselda Martinez, unExpectedly Successful The Show

📺 YouTube: @unexpectedlysuccessfultheshow

📚 RECOMMENDED readings and programs:

🧠 On Mindset - Soundtracks: the surprising solution to overthinking, https://amzn.to/40W2zHv

💬 On Communication - The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication: Apply Them and Make the Most of Your Message, https://amzn.to/3N1c56g

📈 On Scaling Your Business through Synergies - Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork, https://amzn.to/4a7USlQ

🎧 Listen to the show:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/66x3kimKtCA4dSHE51IOEj?si=486ebbd41f284f3d

🍏 Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/un-expectedly-successful-the-podcast/id1691434992

💌 MORE PLACES TO FIND ME 

🎓 Learn about my Online Academy, Her Path to Purpose and Profit, at drgriselda.com   

💼 Economic Development Consulting: ascendostrategies.com

Who I AM:  

I am Dr. Griselda Martinez, your transformational business coach, speaker, and consultant dedicated to empowering seasoned professionals like you to step confidently into entrepreneurship. After reaching the peak of my career, I realized my true calling was not in the corner office but in guiding women to unlock their purpose through business ownership. 

Join me and a community of passionate, purpose-driven entrepreneurs making a real difference. Subscribe to become part of the un-Expectedly Successful tribe, and let's elevate your business journey together. Share your aspirations in the comments and discuss how we can achieve them. Ready to redefine success on your terms? 

Let’s go!

Disclaimer: Some linked items are affiliate-supported, meaning a commission may be earned with no added cost for you.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Who are you at a deep core, like? What are those strengths that you know you can do easily and others can't? But we haven't fully embraced that as our superpower. And if you are ready, I have a challenge for you. Welcome back to another episode of Unexpectedly Successful and I am super excited because we are starting season 4 with episode 31. And if you don't know me, my name is Dr Griselda Martinez, your host and business coach, helping women launch their business so they can live a richer and alive with more fulfillment. So, for my regular listeners, thank you so much for joining me in these conversations. I hope that they are impactful and that you have been able to take action upon them, the tips and insights that you have heard. If you're new to this podcast, welcome, welcome, welcome. And this series is going to be a little different and let me tell you this is my commitment to you all for consistency. I know I need to be consistent and, on its own, that is a business lesson for all of you who are listening. This episode, I will be sharing lessons learned from my own business journey, and the title of it is the top three things that have changed my entrepreneurial world that I would embrace faster if I were to start all over again. So, are you ready? Are you ready? Let's go. So my business story starts in 2021.

Speaker 1: 1:59

When I decided to take this leap of faith, I was an accomplished professional. I had reached titles and salaries that I had dream for many, many years and that I had worked very hard at it. Really, in the audience is connecting with this situation. Okay, I remember clearly that early in my career, in my early 20s, somebody told me that they made over $100,000 in their salaries and I was mind blown $100,000. Who makes that type of money? So from that moment on, I dream of reaching that point and I'm going to talk about an analogy here. Forrest Gump is one of my favorite movies and one of my favorite parts is when Forrest is just running and running and running and people look at him and they were wondering what is his motive in just this crazy intense run. And if you remember the movie, when people came to ask him, including the news and journalists, why are you doing this run? He said I don't know. So in that moment, that was me, in that moment in my career, just running and going after this $100,000 goal that I had seen as impossible for me as it was possible for some others.

Speaker 1: 3:45

So, remember, I am an immigrant, I came from Mexico and this number was just something beyond me. And while I worked really hard, I also contributed to the communities in which I live. Right, I volunteer. I did all these things and I really wanted to make an impact wherever I was, but not in a conscious way. I just knew that I wanted to be an agent of positive change, but I had not embraced fully what that meant.

Speaker 1: 4:25

So in 2018, almost 20 years of me living in the US as a professional, I became a permanent resident and, with that, many doors open, not only physically, but also mentally, because, in my mind, I no longer had the limitations of the work or student visa that I had had for all of this time in the US. So at that point, the possibility of me actually implementing and executing owning my own business became a reality, and I've been at it since 2021. And I want to share with you the lessons learned as a person and as a professional, that have been key to that entrepreneurial journey. If I went back in time, I would embrace this much faster than what I did. Okay, the first one is the power of recognizing your skills and who you are, not just knowing I am all these labels that we use for us right but really who we are at our core. So let me give you an example For me. I have had this journey of my first job working at a local Domino's pizza in Mexico, and I went from that to then creating training programs and implementing them and overseeing in a local airport that I didn't know anything about when I got to that place, to then managing millions of dollars of public funds, and so all of this time and effort that I've put into my career have transformed into experiences, valuable experiences that are part of who I am and part of how I see life and how I see opportunities.

Speaker 1: 6:45

So, as a person changing gears from a professional to as a person, I am an enthusiastic soul. As you see me, as you hear me, I am a loud person. I engage with people. I love engaging with people. Therefore, I am here engaging with you and I love the thought of starting a new adventure, starting something new. But I want to make a pause here.

Speaker 1: 7:14

For many years and I do not remember the exact moment that this happened, but for many, many years, I thought I was too much. How many of you have been there? I am too much, I am too loud, I am too enthusiastic, I am too much of a hard worker, I am too whatever. And I don't remember when the stories came to me, but I do remember the moment, as a business owner, that I realized that each one of those too much were key pieces to me. Getting to this precise moment, being in front of each one of you, my enthusiasm it's on my core because I am a coach. I am a coach and I love to empower women and people for what they can do if they embrace who they are, if they become more self aware, if they know where they're going to. So enthusiasm was key for me to go through my entire career and to get me here, being too positive.

Speaker 1: 8:41

As a business owner, things don't go as planned all the time and as entrepreneurs, we are creative minds that are constantly looking for solutions and different ways of doing something and being positive. I used to say before I own my own business that I love to work with entrepreneurs, which I had the honor of doing for many years before I became a business owner myself. And I used to say you know, I love working with entrepreneurs because they're all the only crazy people who would start something, because they understand that there is a positive outlook and positive outcome on the other side of their effort and all the energy invested into this venture. So let's just say the positive outlook in life was required for me to become a business owner. And then my personality. I used to say I have too much of a personality, but guess what? I am a leader. I don't give up easily. And what do I need as a business owner? I need to keep going, regardless of the things that come my way. I need to find solutions, and I need to. If I fail, I need to learn from that failure and then keep going. And so I needed to be a strong personality to get me to this part. And the loud part you figure that one out All right. Okay, and like me, there are many other women who share similar stories, who share who they are have become, has become an intrinsic part of who they are as a business owner and the opportunities that have come to them through that. And if I can do it, I know you can too if you start taking your next steps.

Speaker 1: 10:50

But until we are bold enough, we will continue to limit ourselves and limit who we really can be. And so right now, can we take a moment to ask, to ask who am I? Who are you at a deep core, like, what are those strengths that you know you can do easily and others can't? But we haven't fully embraced that as our superpower. And if you are ready, I have a challenge for you today. Can you start a success journal? Yeah, a journal where you are documenting everything that people tell you that you did extraordinary, every major accomplishment. If you presented anyone really well, that may be a superpower. If you do an extraordinary job in project management including those moms out there, because all of you, what you do is project management with those children If you create Excel spreadsheets and you can teach others, that is a superpower. Not everybody knows that. And one of the very interesting pieces to our superpowers is because they come so easy to us we don't even realize that it is a strength of ours. We can say, oh, it's easy. I've heard it over and over, including in my earned journey.

Speaker 1: 12:41

Okay, number two, the significance of knowing your North Star and the North Star. I love the skies, I love nature and the skies I just can spend time looking at the clouds, and at night I love the skies filled with stars and just wonderful things out there. And as entrepreneurs, we need a North Star, and let me take a parenthesis here, tell you that even in the sky, with so many beautiful stars, we need one to follow, and they're all beautiful, They'll have their unique path, but there is one that is our star, that will take us home, that will take us to that goal that we are looking for, and that's what I call the North Star. And one book that has changed my life is Indestructible, and the author talks about how the opposite to destruction is not focus, but it is traction, and traction he defines it as those forces, everything that pulls us into the direction where we want to go, and the opposite to traction being destruction that pulls us away from the things that we want. And the things that we want can be work or family or fun or anything that we have as an objective, as a goal. So for me, as a business owner, my North Star have been my core values, and I have core values identified for me as a person, for me as a business and for my business, for me and my husband, for our marriage, and these are values that are non-negotiable. And the importance of this is I'm going to tell you a little story.

Speaker 1: 15:08

Early in my business ownership process, I had not identified my core values and this project came to me and I knew it was not going to be something aligned to what I enjoy deeply. I knew that I wanted impact through the work that I was doing and this project was not going to move forward beyond the contract, the work in the contract that I was going to be doing. And I knew I was not going to enjoy the process because I had been there before as an employee. But guess what? It was income, it was revenue for my business and I decided to take that contract. I will leave it as it was a big lesson learned because I did not enjoy the process, the project was not fruitful and it was taking more energy out of me to go through the process than if I would have stayed, with that energy to create something dear and near to my heart, aligned to my values. So when there is this misalignment of values, there is lack of joy, lack of satisfaction and there is something deep in our hearts that would just not let us be full ourselves. So if you have not identified your core values, I invite you to start doing that and then stay focused on what that is, because my decision process as a business owner has radically changed, because my core values are my North Star and they help me minimize the friction and misalignment between my values and the projects that I take on. So that is number two.

Speaker 1: 17:21

Number three embrace courage over fear, and a very tangible example is me today, here with you. This is the first time that I'm speaking about the lessons learned through my business journey in my podcast. So do you think that was uncomfortable? But guess what? Our stories are not for ourselves. I strongly believe that our stories are meant to help somebody else who is seeking an answer. There is no instructions for life. And guess what?

Speaker 1: 18:06

Courage does not mean that fear is not there. Courage means that, despite the knowledge of us knowing that challenges will come our way, that barriers may be present, we are committed to taking our next step and we take that risk. And guess what? It's not just taking a risk without thinking about it. I want to clarify that point. Very important it is calculated risks that we know that we can overcome, that end that we are truly committed on facing that step, despite the unknown, and with all determination.

Speaker 1: 18:59

So, also, when I decided to leave my job, I was afraid of failure. I did not know what I was facing. I had seen people around me doing it, but I had not experienced it myself. I was risking my financial stability and also I was exploring areas that I had not explored before. Because what If I had not taken that risk, that calculated risk, I would not be here in front of you doing one of the things that I enjoy most in my life and definitely in my career. So if you are struggling with fear, remember that courage is not the absence of fear, it's not the absence of nervousness, but it is the fact that you take that next step, knowing that you are committed to figuring it out.

Speaker 1: 20:06

Let's remember any big success is many small steps that build up to that massive success that we often just see. There are so many things behind the scenes that are being done by any business owner that when the curtains open up and we see all of these wonderful things happening, it's like, oh, they just happened. In reality, it's one step at a time building upon the next one. Execution is key in getting that courage and keeping us going. Let's embrace our fears. Let's not ignore them, because if we ignore them, they're not going to go away. Let's acknowledge them and even thank them for wanting to protect us from the unknown and, despite the fear being there, take our next step.

Speaker 1: 21:07

I want to summarize the top three things that have changed my entrepreneur journey. The first one is recognize and embrace your skills, your talents, your gifts and who you are in full, not who you are at work, not who you are at home, not who you are when you're with your friends, but who you are as a whole, with all the beautiful strengths and skills and experiences that have brought you to this moment. Number two identify your core values as a person, as a future business owner. What do you want your business to represent? And the faster you identify those core values and put effort into aligning core values with your actions and decisions, the more satisfied you will be faster. So that is so important.

Speaker 1: 22:09

And number three embrace courage over fear sooner Because, as I said, fear is courageous. Actions are not those without fear. They're actions that are taken despite the fears and the doubts being there. If you connected to any of these items that I've mentioned. Read the descriptions here below, because we have really cool opportunities coming and I would love for you to become aware of them. Until next time, my dear audience. This is your host, grisela Martinez, and business coach and, like I love to say more, to come See you in the next episode.