On today’s episode, I am sharing a re-released podcast episode that will challenge the way you are thinking about going after your goals this year. During this episode I will challenge the way you think about leading and challenge you to start showing up doing the scary things while being yourself. This episode is a true pep talk.
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Transcript:
[00:00:00] How can being emotionally aware, having emotional intelligence, being aware of what they’re going through, how can that help you become a better leader for them?
My name is Catalina Del Carmen and I’m on a mission to put more cash in the hands of women of color. I’m a wife, mom, amiga, prima, and I happen to run a multiple six figure coaching business. On this show, I share sales and marketing strategies that keep your business simple, your mindset focused, your bank account big, and your.
impact even bigger. So if you are on a mission to create generational change and you want to make a lot of money doing it, [00:01:00] welcome to the Latinas Booked Out Podcast.
What is up y’all? Welcome back to Latinas Booked Out Podcast. I hope you are doing well. I know you could hear my nasally sound. It is because I am so stuffy right now, but I wanted to make sure that I did a proper intro for this episode. So on today’s episode, I am resharing a podcast episode from 2021.
Y’all this episode was recorded. When I had just finished my second five figure month ever, and I, I really was leaning into, I’m ready to show up as a leader. I’m ready to do the [00:02:00] work. I’m ready to pave the way. And this episode I wanted to reshare because it’s. It’s really a reflection of where my mind was at on the way to my first six figure year.
And really it was the, and it was the beginning of my multiple six figure year selling one on one coaching back in 2021. But when I was listening back to this episode, it was so powerful. And I wanted to reshare it with you, because if you are in a place where you are looking at that Whether it’s a six figure mark, a multiple six figure mark, a 50K mark, or even your first like 10K in business, regardless, if you are mentally there, you’re mentally already leading.
So on today’s episode, I’m sharing an episode called Be The Leader. And I hope you enjoy. I hope you take something in a way I know you will really. Even when I listen back to these episodes, [00:03:00] I take something away and I remember, you know, what my mindset was like at that time. So I know it’ll be so helpful.
Before we get into that, I want to remind you that if you have listened to this podcast, if you have taken something away, it would mean so much to me if you could leave a review on Apple podcasts. If you could share it on Instagram stories on Tik Tok or Facebook or via text, whatever. But if you think you know someone who will get value from it, it would mean so, so much to me.
All right, y’all, let’s get into this episode. Let’s do it. So I really love today’s topic because today’s topic is about leadership. It’s about really stepping up as a leader. Of your life, a leader in your family, a leader in your community. I know for sure that if you are listening to this, if you have listened to episodes in the past.[00:04:00]
It means you’re a leader. It means you like to learn. It means you are continuing to always grow and grow and grow and learn and learn and learn and test and test and test. And I recognize that. So today I want to talk about my experience in stepping into my power and what becoming a leader has felt like to me.
And the lessons I’ve learned of becoming the leader, a leader, I should say my own leader. So I have a couple kind of topics I want to talk about that I like thoughts that have stuck with me and moments where I really had to step up as a leader. And, um, hopefully that will help you in your journey as you step more and more and more into your power.
So here’s something you should know [00:05:00] about me. I have been some sort of leader for a long time. I was in leadership in high school. I would, anyone who knows me in high school knows this. I was class president. Three years in a row. I remember freshman year of high school, actually it started before that. So my, I have an older sister who’s four years older than me.
And I used to look at her yearbooks and her yearbooks, like the beginning pages were filled with like leadership class and dressing up and spirit week. Um, people getting really excited about their different classes and homecoming week. And if you’re not familiar with these terms, like if you’re maybe overseas or if you’re not from the United States, um, these are just like pep rallies or things to get school exciting.
Um, and for people to have spirit in their school. So I used to, when I was in middle school, I used [00:06:00] to look at my sister’s yearbooks and be like, I want to do that. Like this looks so fun. So when I got into high school. I freshman year, I didn’t like go for leadership at all. And I remember we had the worst class president and I was a very involved person.
Like I was like trying to get involved wherever I could and our class president sucked, which. Later, turns out that that person ended up being my, like, boyfriend for a long time. Um, but at that time, I was like, this guy sucks. I need to be class president. Like somebody needs to really have spirit and like really do this job well.
So sophomore year, I went for class president. I won. I don’t think a lot of people even voted. And then I continued on to be junior class president and senior class president. I was very, very involved in school and I loved it. I [00:07:00] enjoyed it. Like I really, really did enjoy, um, like those experiences and that was my first dose of leadership.
Although that feels like so far away, um, from now, that was my first dose. That being said, when I left high school and got into college, I decided to go to a college where not a lot of my friends were going to. I actually, probably none of, no, none of my friends. And I had a really hard time in college because not only was I a pretty bad student, and when I say bad student, I mean, I didn’t have good study habits, I wasn’t really serious about college, I, like, I just, I honestly was there thinking it was going to be like high school, and it was not.
So my confidence really took a dip in college and I got into, um, I started working at Nordstrom and when I started working at Nordstrom and Nordstrom is a department store in the United States. And when [00:08:00] I started working at Nordstrom, I really started enjoy sales because we were all commission based and I ended up having a really long career at Nordstrom.
So I worked at this company for about eight years. And during that time, I, I grew through many, many different positions. So I had, I want to say I had 12 positions in those eight years, which I know seems like a lot. It is a lot. Um, but they only hire from within. So meaning everyone starts at the bottom and you kind of grow that way.
So because I, and I also really aligned to their values as a company, I really liked that they promoted from within meaning no managers. Would just come and be managers. You had to start as a salesperson. I really, really liked that and that model and, um, they, their training was so good. I remember they talked a lot about servant leadership [00:09:00] and they really valued customer service and I just really appreciated it.
That being said, in my many years there, one of the best opportunities I ever had, and to be honest, this is one of my favorite jobs I’ve ever had in my life, was a personal stylist manager at Nordstrom. I handled a team of 15 people and I grew that from eight people to 15. And not only did I manage 18 people, meaning I gave, you know, 18 annual reviews to them.
I coached them. I was their manager, but I was also about 23 years old, maybe 23, 24 years old. I was young. I had to learn really quickly how to get people on my side, how to get people to listen to me. And I had had a lot of bad managers prior, like I had learned a lot of lessons. And I remember [00:10:00] when I got into that position, I was like, I don’t want to do it like them.
Like, I want to do it in a way that, like, I don’t want this to be like a hierarchy. I just want to build these relationships with my team so we could be on the same page. I had one of my, um, employees, I don’t want to say employees, one of the people on my team. It was a 60 year old man. He had been a salesperson at Nordstrom in the suits department, men’s suits department for many, many, many years.
He had seen many, many, many managers come and go. And my little 23, 24 year old ass was just one more manager, whatever. And I remember I was like, how am I going to build a relationship with this man? Cause he is somebody who, like, I’m just another person, like, he’s been doing this work, right? I built a relationship with him.
I ended up really building a [00:11:00] lot of rapport with him, and we grew this relationship of like, hey, I scratch your back, you scratch mine, like, I got you if you got me. And one thing I learned really quickly in this role is that you have to serve as a leader. If you really want to be a leader in any space possible, You have to be a servant of some sort.
You have to give of some sort. And when I say leader, I mean the type of leader I want to be, right? Like there are some leaders that aren’t like servant leaders, right? But the type of leader I always wanted to be was someone who would roll up their sleeves and do the hard work next to their team. I always wanted to be that type of manager.
I always wanted to be that type of leader. So one of the lessons I learned in that job was to really have emotional intelligence. And obviously like having emotional intelligence doesn’t like, it doesn’t happen like that. You don’t just [00:12:00] have it, you grow it. Right. But emotional intelligence is basically in, yeah, in my own definition, it’s basically Being aware of other people’s emotions and having empathy for them, right?
So for example, in what I was just explaining in my job at Nordstrom, I had empathy for this 60 year old man who had been doing this job for so long. I could have gone in there and be like, I’m your manager now, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But no, I had empathy, right? I had the emotional intelligence to understand that I was just one manager of many before and after.
So I had to come at this differently. So when I talk about emotional intelligence and when I talk about serving, I really, really want you to take a look at like how you show up in your [00:13:00] business, how you show up for your audience. Are you serving them? Are you serving them with value? Are you teaching them?
Not teaching them just like, Oh, here’s how to do it. But really teaching them through example, showing through example. Are you servicing your audience? Are you serving them? Are you rolling up your sleeves and doing the work and maybe showing that behind the scenes? Are you being vulnerable with them? Are you helping them understand?
I get you. I’ve been there. I’ve been there. You will get through this. Emotional intelligence is something that I’ve always, always, always kind of naturally had. And I think it comes, I think a lot of it comes from [00:14:00] like some street smarts too, right? Like I think if you grow up, my husband has a lot of like emotional intelligence because he grew up with a really tough upbringing.
So he can spot, like, we, we’re both really good at like spotting fake when we see it, but we’re also, we’re also people who like can really, really empathize with people in certain situations or in all situations, right? But I want to think about how can you show up in your business for your audience, for your community?
How can you meet them where they’re at? How can you serve them from a place of understanding where they are at, understanding that they’ve seen a lot of other coaches do a lot of other things, telling them a lot of other ways. How can you show up being your audience? True vulnerable self, one [00:15:00] of, and I say this job as personal stylist manager was one of my favorite jobs because I had people on my team who were 18 years old and 60 years old.
And I grew that team and I hired people and I trained people and all of the folks on my team. Most of them. We’re really amazing folks. They were people that I wanted to be around. They were people that aligned with my personal values. They were people who wanted to do good work. We have to step up as the leader sometimes, not sometimes.
If you want this, I want you to step up as a leader. I want you to really start having empathy and understanding for the people who are watching you for your audience, for your future customers, for your [00:16:00] future clients. How can being emotionally aware, having emotional intelligence, being aware of what they’re going through, how can that help you become a better leader for them?
All right, I’m going to go into number two. One huge, I’m going to say this is a huge piece of my growth, a huge part of my growth had to do with me making quick decisions. Look, there is no right way to build your business. There’s just like you building your business and figuring it out as you go. I mean, I’m sure there are some wrong ways to do a business, but here’s the deal.
There was a moment and there’s two moments. There’s one moment when. I was, um, in my job, um, a couple of years ago, maybe six years [00:17:00] ago when I was a coordinator at a tech company, a tech startup. And I remember my manager or my coworker had just turned into my manager. She was a really, she is a really good friend of mine now.
Um, she became my manager and I remember she stepped into this leadership role where she like. took on this whole department, right? And I saw her turn into this leader. And the best thing was she won. She was an amazing boss, right? She was an amazing, amazing manager. And the reason I say she was an amazing manager is because she really allowed me to grow at my own pace.
And she was also a manager who was Going to push you outside of your own boundaries. And what I mean by that is her name was Wes. Her name is Wes. She actually was on my [00:18:00] podcast and she’s the first guest I ever had on my podcast because she’s a mentor of mine. Wes was an amazing manager because I remember she was the first person, first manager that ever let me handle my own problems.
And what I mean by that is when I came to her with an issue, I, she would say, what would you do? And I would say, well, I would do this. And she’d say, well, why don’t you do that? And I’d say, well, I’m not the manager. I feel like this is something a manager should do. And she’d say, why? And I’m like, well, because you’re the manager.
And the honest truth was I was scared to make these decisions at work because one, I didn’t have the freedom to make those decisions at work in the past. And number two, I was scared of making decisions. I [00:19:00] didn’t want to make the decisions. And she was the first manager to really give me space to empower me to make decisions on behalf of her.
And she just trusted me. It’s kind of scary when you gotta make decisions and it’s kind of scary when you are trusted to make the decisions. And this happened again, like these lessons again about being a decision maker and a quick decision maker. It also happened when I started my business and when I started my podcast, you have to make quick decisions because in the beginning of your business, you got to just move.
Think about the biggest, best leaders, not biggest. Think about the best leaders that you know of the leaders. They could be in your personal life. They could be in society, right? Like if we think about Oprah, if [00:20:00] we think about Serena Williams, if we think about leaders, people, they’re not sitting on decisions for a long time and they probably are never sitting on decisions that should take just a couple seconds.
If you are an indecisive person, if you are a person who procrastinates, if you are a person who is very overwhelmed with just making a decision, I highly recommend you make decisions no more than five minutes. That’s what helped me. I remember there was a book I read By Tony Robbins, and I know Tony Robbins is a little bit like people have thoughts about him.
I have some thoughts about him, but I read his book like a long time ago, and I forget what book it was now, actually. Um, I think it’s, [00:21:00] uh, Awaken the Giant Within or something like that. And I read some of that book and one piece of it was all about decision making and it’s the first time I had ever really seen her, like ever read about this or heard about this being discussed and his approach was like, make fast decisions, go fast.
The why it’s important to go fast is. You become a better decision maker for your life when you are making more decisions, you gotta like do them fast so you can start trusting yourself to make decisions. And I took that with me in my career and in my business and in the beginning of my podcast journey, I remember this going through my head a lot.
I was like, Cat, just make a decision, just make a decision. And I did not allow myself to sit on decisions for more than a day and probably more than like a couple hours. Like I was just like, do it, [00:22:00] just do it. And I took a lot of messy action. And I know a lot of people hate on messy action, but messy action got me here.
Messy action got me to create a coaching business in like less than a year and have five figure months like messy action got me here. So I want you to think about. Those leaders that you look up to, are they sitting on decisions? We have to be faster decision makers. That’s how we become better decision makers.
At least that’s what I know to be true. All right. Number three, I want to talk about what you envision yourself to be, who you envision yourself to be. It’s really, really, it has been really, really important for me to start [00:23:00] envisioning the absolute badass leader version of myself, like, in the future. What does Cat look like when she’s making 500, 000?
And helping thousands of women, maybe not thousands at that point yet, maybe hundreds, helping hundreds of women make money as a coach when she’s helping hundreds of women of color learning how to sell and making their own money. What is it going to look like when that version of Cat Like, what version of Catalina is going to help women of color retire their frickin husbands because they’re so frickin rich?
Who is she? How does she show up for her business? [00:24:00] Look, now those are like my things, right? I want you to think about your future version of yourself. Maybe it’s money, maybe she has money, maybe she has a ton of impact, maybe she owns a non profit, maybe, I don’t know what it looks like for you. But I really want you to start envisioning who that person is.
What do they do during the week? How do they handle their business? How do they make decisions? What do they do with their time? Why are you vacationing? What type of people are you surrounding yourself with? What kind of things do you worry about that future version of yourself? How does that person show up in their business?
How does that person show up on social media? One thing I have started to really embrace is the future version of myself. I [00:25:00] really, really, really want you to think about what your life can look like in five years. So for me, five years from now, I’m 33. I’m about to be 34. Actually, I’m getting up there.
Y’all. But I’m 33 and in five years I’ll be five, six, seven, eight, eight, nine, almost 40. I’m actually really excited for 40. I’m like, I feel like it’s going to be other level cat, but for real, I want you to envision who you will be in five years and how that person will dress, how that person will get ready in the morning.
What will their morning routine be? What type of things will they be managing? What will they be doing? What, what will they not be doing? And then I want you to start embodying that person. I want you to embody that person. I want you to show [00:26:00] up as that person. What type of thoughts? Does that person have that version of yourself have, what type of thoughts, how long does it take her to make decisions?
I want you to get to know this person, this future version of yourself. I bet you the future version of yourself. Is not worrying about these tiny little things on how people will perceive them. I’m sure that future version of yourself is bad as F. Showing up hard, so secure in yourself. Isn’t tripping about what people think.
Probably has a really nice little routine. Probably spends time with their friends and family. [00:27:00] I want you to start embodying that person now, even if it’s the tiniest, tiniest step. It’s time for you to be a leader in your own community. All right. Number four. This is the last kind of little tidbit I want to share that has helped me, um, really become a leader in.
My community and a leader in my space is owning who you are owning who you are right now. Now I already talked about your future self, right? Well, now I want to talk about you right freaking now own who you are when we think about the leaders, right? When we think about, like, I think about Beyonce and I think about how she has had so many levels, right, like we’ve watched her grown [00:28:00] up, grow up and become this leader of not only her family and her, you know, her space, her community, but really become a leader in, like, as a public figure.
She has owned herself, even in, you know, like, she still had her moments with bootylicious and like, you know, she grew, but even when she was there, she showed up. Right. So I want you to think about who are you now and how can you own who you are? I have one of my clients who. We were talking about content and I was telling her like, I want this person to show up online, like the person in front of me on this coaching call.
This is who I want to see online. Like, I really felt like there was a persona online and then there was the persona who was in front of me. And I remember she got a little bit [00:29:00] like annoyed with that and we had to go back and forth a couple of times. But I was like, no, I really think there’s something missing here.
Like your audience isn’t seeing your true self. We had to go back and forth a couple of times, but I was like, no, I really think there’s something here. I think what your audience really wants is for you to take off this kind of like perfect, you know, facade. And just show up the way you are. And we ended up coming to after a lot of digging, right.
And after a lot of conversation, what happened was, is she knew that she was a person that was very blunt and direct and, um, preachy, right. And she didn’t want to show up rude. She wanted to show up like kind and sweet and like, not be like that. But the honest truth is that [00:30:00] is who she is, right? Like she is forward and blunt and doesn’t like, doesn’t sugarcoat.
She is who she is and I’m not even kidding when she started showing up just being her truest most authentic self when she was telling it how it is in the way that she is naturally people started to stick. She got more consulting calls. She got people reaching out. She felt better. She felt better about making content.
I want you to start really owning and loving who you are and how you do things. You are perfectly freaking made. I believe this. I believe you are perfectly made. And [00:31:00] What is really like what your audience is really missing from you is you believing that you are the hot shit that you are for real. I want you to start owning who you are.
For me, it was very similar to my client. I remember I thought I was too much. I thought I was too loud. I thought I was too optimistic. Sometimes I thought I was a little too forward. And the minute I started just showing up who I am and really owning it, like not just showing up and owning it, but owning it in my freaking life, I started to slowly become that leader version of myself.
I am constantly, constantly stepping in to that leader. This is what I want for you. And here’s why. Let me end this with one more thing. There are [00:32:00] so many white old men and some young broey white men and women too in a lot of industries who are trying to keep us down. Yes, I’m going there. Okay. I’m talking white supremacy.
In the workplace, in life, here’s the thing. When we step in to our power, when we own who we are, when we serve the way we want to serve, when we make decisions, when we make decisions, when we embody that future version of ourselves. That is when we are stepping into our power. That is when we can make change because I promise, I [00:33:00] promise you that people are watching you.
And when I say people are watching you, your community is watching you. They are waiting for you to show up into your truest self. They are waiting. And honestly, we freaking need it. Every single space, every single industry, it doesn’t matter who you are and what you do and what you want to do. We need more people of color in those spaces.
We need leaders in those spaces. We need to be in all the freaking rooms. So I really do ask you to step in to the future version of yourself. We need leaders. We need leaders and we need them right now. I don’t want you to go another day. I don’t want you to go another month[00:34:00]
downplaying your freaking gifts. Why? Because you’re afraid what people will think? Because you might fail? Well, guess what? It’s a part of the journey and I know you know this. It’s time to step up. It’s time to step, step up for yourself, step up for your family, step up for your community. But more importantly, step up for yourself.
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