In this episode of Show Up Real, Catalina Del Carmen reflects on the last year of growth—personally and professionally—and what it’s taught her about change, business, and self-trust.

This is a conversation about evolution. The kind that doesn’t follow a straight line and doesn’t always look “successful” from the outside.

Catalina shares what it’s been like moving through expansion, contraction, and rebuilding—and why none of those phases mean you’re doing it wrong.

Join us by subscribing & following me on IG @catdelcarmen 

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Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to Show Up Real podcast. I hope you are doing well. I miss you. I miss recording this podcast, and I’m so glad I took some time because I really did need it. But also, I’m so excited to be back.

I have felt like 2026 has been the year where I am just getting more and more and more clarity. I’m just feeling so much more confident and clear in my direction and what I want and what I’m doing and all of the things. And it makes me so proud of myself for what 2025 was. I have grown so much. I feel like I’m just entering a new era, like an era where I’m just… I don’t know, I’m just such a more grown ass woman.

I definitely took a hit last year from an ego point of view. And I think this year I am just getting that back. I’m getting my confidence back and getting my mojo back. I’m not really giving a fuck about what anybody thinks or needs to say or like, I don’t know. Something’s up and I’m excited.

So I’ve also heard about the Chinese New Year and like last year was the year of the snake, I believe. And now we’re going to the horse and I’m like fully bought in into whatever that is because I literally feel like it’s me. Like, I feel like that has been my kind of story and experience. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s basically like the year of the snake is supposed to be where you’re shedding this identity and really looking at your life and seeing what you’re taking with you to the next level and what you’re not.

And then I think it’s mid February, like the 14th or 15th, is when Chinese New Year starts. And then the year of the horse starts, and horse is supposed to be all about accelerating and really going for it. And I’m like fully bought in. Like I’m fully bought in and I’m excited about it because I really do feel like I have been shedding an identity all of last year.

And I feel like this year I am definitely walking and talking like someone else, like at least a new kind of level for me. And I’m so excited. And I’m excited that the podcast is back.

I redid the intro, I hope you liked it. I think it’s a little long. I am gonna shorten it probably in the next couple episodes. But I really wanted to make it more aligned with where I am in my life and where I am in my business and not, honestly, just not kind of box myself up so, so much.

Yeah. I hope you like it. I loved it. I was so pumped to finally get it made and kind of understand the direction I want to go with the podcast.

I have at least over a dozen guests that we recently reached out to that I’m hoping will be on the show. And some are already kind of signed up. And I’m so pumped. We have some amazing guests that I’m going to have on that I have so many questions for.

So that will be coming in the next months. You will hear from those guests. But I’m so excited. I’m really, really excited for this next chapter.

All right. Anything I want to say before we get into the episode? No, I think that’s it. Welcome back to Show Up Real podcast. I’ve missed you.

And today we are going to talk about an episode that is very relevant to what I have been growing through and the realizations that I’ve had in the last, you know, somewhere between 12 to 14 months, let’s say. I have been doing so much growing, and today’s podcast, I want to talk a little bit about that growth.

But more importantly, I really want this to be an episode that gives you a lot of permission to evolve. And that’s what I’m calling today’s episode: permission to evolve.

Okay? Here’s why I named this episode that name. Because for so long, so too long in my business, I have spent so much time obsessing over what my business was supposed to look like or is supposed to look like. And anytime I started breaking a rule in my business, I started making it mean something about me. And I didn’t like that. I was like, this is very, very toxic. This is my business and I get to do whatever the hell I want in my business.

And I think because I’ve been in the coaching world for so long and I’ve been in the same kind of coaching containers for so long, you get used to thinking that like, this is the way a business is supposed to be or this is the way that your growth is supposed to look. And that’s not true. I want to make it clear there. It’s just not true.

Your business is going to look different than other people’s businesses, and that’s OK. And that doesn’t mean that there’s no point of coaching and coaching containers. It just means that there are phases of your business or your life where it’s going to look one way, and there are phases where it might look another way. And that’s okay. That’s okay.

And here’s the thing. I have been in business now for going… this year will be my sixth year, which is just wild to say out loud, to be honest. It is really wild to say because once upon a time, I just deeply wanted a business. Like, I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to build this online business.

And to know and realize that this is just my full reality and like I 100% made this reality happen… I think the last year, it wasn’t even just last year, it was more like the last 20 months, something like that. I kind of knew something was off in my business and that I needed to make another couple changes from a mindset point of view, but also from a strategy point of view.

But I spent so much time obsessing over why it’s a bad idea and why I shouldn’t do that and why it’s risky and why blah blah blah. And I also had a lot of life stuff going on that I really haven’t talked about at all, and I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about yet.

But it’s just been a wild, wild 20 months. And in this episode, I really want to share what I’ve learned in those five, six years and give you full permission to grow and evolve and change and remind you that although there is absolutely risk in that, there’s also a tremendous amount of growth, a tremendous amount of clarity.

And it is a part of a cycle. It is a part of a pattern in growth that I think we could all take something from, that we could all learn from. So today’s episode, I really wanna explain this pattern, this framework. You can call it whatever you want. But what I’ve really learned by growing my business, being a person who’s constantly challenging herself to grow and to become the person I want to be, or to become more of the person that I want to be and that I like to be… right?

That’s what we’re gonna talk about today. And it starts with… I’m first going to get into when I started my business and where my head was at. Then we’ll get into my mindset when I was scaling. Then we’ll get into the last 20 months, year and a half-ish, where I really had to force myself to shift and evolve and how scary that could be and how it’s okay to do it and what I’ve learned and what I would do differently.

So let’s get into this. So first I want to just make it super clear that the kind of three sections, the three phases of growth that I want to talk about, the three phases of evolving… not just growth, but of evolving… is: there is the expansion phase, then there’s the contraction phase, and then there’s the intentional rebuilding phase, okay?

That’s what we’re going to talk about. And I’m going to talk about these through my stories, including a story I haven’t told before, which is the story of closing my mastermind.

All right, let’s get into it. So first, I want to start with the beginning of my business and why that time frame was so important to expansion and expanding.

So in 2019 and 2020… In 2019, I started my podcast and it was really the official beginning of my personal development or coaching business per se. And it really started with hosting an in-person event that I called Follow That Fear.

Follow That Fear was a training that I put on together, like a workshop that I put on together for my network, for my colleagues, friends, audience at that time. And I wanted to create a space where I could teach people what I have learned about following your fear and the importance of it and how everything good that has really happened to me, it happened because I followed the fear. I didn’t run away from it, I followed it. And I really did truly believe that. I still believe that till this day.

And from the workshop, I couldn’t keep up with having multiple workshops over and over. So I decided to turn it into a podcast. And that podcast was the first type of content that I really stuck to, that I really got consistent with and grew and really committed to growing an audience around the podcast, growing a community.

And what I was growing was very mission-driven. I was really sick and tired of having friends and family downplay their skills and downplay their greatness. And the way I saw them were these bad ass women. And when I would have conversations with them, it was just clear that they were playing so small. And I remember how much it bothered me.

So, so much of Follow That Fear was creating a space for people who didn’t want to play small anymore and who also wanted to hear perspective from someone who they could relate to, a Latina in my case. Someone who is first generation, who has a lot of the first generation trauma and parenting style and kids of immigrants, right? There’s a specific type of way that the majority of us grew up that not everyone could speak to and understand. That also affects how we approach goals and risk-taking and following our fear.

So a lot of that chapter in my business in 2019 and 2020, that chapter was all about trying things out. Like there was no hard strategy in growing my audience. There was no, “I’m gonna do this and this and this and that’s what we’re gonna do for the year.” No.

I was like, “I need to get a fucking episode out every single week.” Like that is absolutely the plan. Now, I did not pick out podcast episode topics ahead of time. I did not have any scripts. Well, I actually did in the beginning, but I did scripts for a while, maybe like four or five episodes, and then I just stopped and I started winging it.

There was no hard strategy outside of “get the episode out every single week,” create content to grow the Instagram community because it was separate, and get people to listen. That was really it. Like, how do I get people to the podcast? It was doing the podcast every week, and then how do I get people to the podcast?

And there were so many strategies that I tried, and I was willing to. It was the time where I was just like, “No, we’re throwing all the spaghetti at the wall. We’re trying all the things.”

I was DMing every single person who followed me way before many chats. I was personally looking at who was following me and sending them an audio DM saying, “Hey, thank you so much for joining the community. This is a community and a podcast page. Our podcast is out every Tuesday. It’s called Follow That Fear. I’m always looking for ideas on what to talk about. So if you ever have any, feel free to DM me. Thank you so much for being here.”

And so many people did not reply. They read it or listened to it, I should say, and then didn’t reply. It was really the first time I was like, it means nothing. It’s fine. I don’t need anything from them. This is my job to spread the podcast, to get this knowledge out there.

I would go on Facebook groups and give advice on what was working for me, especially because I was building a podcast. I would give a lot of podcasting advice because I was seeing a little bit of traction.

I honestly didn’t care. I was just like, I need to get this podcast out. I need to get more value out into the world. I’ll do whatever I got to do.

And for this chapter, I had a job. I was on maternity leave with an infant, went back to work, COVID happened… it was craziness. But I really was focused on just like, I need to get this episode out every week. Like that was the main focus. And then little by little, things started to work and shift and they started to monetize a little bit more.

And then, so that’s the expansion phase. That’s the phase where we’re like, we’re just trying to expand, we’re trying to grow, we’re trying to get in people’s ears, just focusing on what I have to do.

Then there’s the learning how to monetize phase. Once I had some success with a podcast, I think I hit 20,000 downloads the first year, which is great success, but not spectacular, but it was good. Like I was really, really happy. I could feel the community.

It’s weird with a podcast because you really don’t have a, you know, people can’t like your podcast and then you get notified. So that part was… you know, I had to get used to. But I did have a community on Instagram.

And when I started to monetize, I really also did some testing and learning, right? I was trying to figure out like, what’s my niche and what’s my this? And I’ve told the story tons of times, so I won’t go through it in much detail, but I’ll kind of tell you how it went by offer.

In 2020, it was around May, I want to say, I made an offer to do one-on-one strategy calls on my podcast. And I literally said, “If you are interested in a strategy call with me, email this.” And I literally said the email out loud. And literally like a month later, I got two emails within the same week. And I remember I was just like, what?

And that’s when I made my first like 600 bucks, I think. And then that was the first thing I sold.

Then I created a course called Podcast Marketing Lab. That course I sold in October of 2020. Then in November of 2020, I sold a program called Show Up Real, actually, which is the name of my group program now. But it was like kind of the version one of it. And that was like a personal branding group program. And that was the first time I made like $5,000 or something like that, I remember, because I got a one-on-one client too.

And I was just testing and learning and figuring things out and launching and creating and really just diving into growth, trying to figure out how to sell.

And then in 2021, when I decided to just focus on one-on-one coaching, that is when my business really grew. I grew it to 214K in sales by the end of that year.

And then in 2022, I got pregnant at the very beginning of that year and got New York Times. I was featured on the Sunday Business Times business page on a Sunday. Like, it was just crazy. I actually ended up getting COVID. I invested in my first mastermind, which was like $25,000. I was just making a lot of moves and I was pregnant. And that was 2022.

And then I scaled my one-on-one coaching to a group program. It was a mastermind. I called it… it was named Show Up and Lead. And I spent that year selling Show Up and Lead while I was on mat leave, really learning how to launch in 2023.

Did the same thing, launched my mastermind. I also launched a group program called Show Up Real, which is the program I have now.

In 2024 is when I really started feeling like something was kind of off. And by that time, I was pretty much averaging somewhere between 150K to 300K, like somewhere in between there was my 12-month revenue, which is a huge accomplishment. But I remember the first time I hit 300K, I didn’t like the way I made it. And I remember… and it’s because I was selling my mastermind and I wasn’t a thousand percent sure that my mastermind was the program that I wanted to stand behind and sell.

And I just remember this was 2024. In 2024, that was when my youngest was getting older. He was turning one and two. And I just remember not wanting to sell my offer. Like, it just didn’t feel right.

And I struggled with this thought because for the longest time, you know, if you don’t want to do something in your business, that’s normal, but you still got to fucking do it. Like, you still got to do it to make money to keep the business going.

So I remember just really having a challenging time with what I was supposed to do. And what I did was I sold the offer. I still kept selling. I did what I was supposed to do. I went through the launch. I did everything I was supposed to do.

And I remember the last time I sold the mastermind, every single part of that launch just did not feel good. I didn’t want to run the program. I did not want to sell the program. But I had such a hard time letting that be my truth.

I had such a hard time, even though I knew something was off.

So it was around that time where I… this was the last launch of Show Up and Lead. This was 2024, the summer, the end of summer and fall going into 2024. And after the launch was complete, I think I signed three or four people, I forgot. Which I was not surprised with the results because I just, I didn’t want to sell the program, right?

Right around that time, it was also when PJ, my first son, was starting kindergarten. And for his kindergarten class, I wanted to pick him up every day. I remember. I was like, I want to pick him up every day from kindergarten. Like, it’s just what I want.

And I feel like I had sacrificed so much of my time with my kids or things I wanted to do with my kids at that point that I really struggled to accept that I wanted to pick up my son every day. Now for some people that might sound silly, like what’s the big deal? It’s your kid, you want to pick him up. You should be able to if you can.

But as a very ambitious woman who has poured so much into her business, it was really, really difficult for me to even accept that. Just to accept it. I wanted to be more present and spend more time with my kids. That’s the truth.

But what was hard for me was, “I’m supposed to be this really ambitious person. I’m supposed to want to scale my business. I’m supposed to whatever,” right?

And I made the decision. I remember I went back and forth about it for at least a month. I talked to many people. I didn’t talk to my coach at that time. I have many friends who are coaches and I did ask them. And I remember the last conversation I had with one of my friends who’s also a coach when I was asking her for her opinion and advice, she was like, “Cat, it seems like you’re very sure about this, and it seems like a very intentional decision.”

And I was like, yeah, you’re right, because it is an intentional decision.

So I closed the mastermind. I sent an email to all my clients. I let them know. We had this call where we talked about it, figured out which ones from a contract level needed a refund or could have a refund, which ones weren’t applicable for a refund, and what would I offer them instead?

And I was just trying to figure all this out, and I did. And I remember sending the email, and I was just like, my god, am I making the worst decision of my life? This is the program that has made me the most money in my business the last two years. Like this is a bad decision. Like everything in my brain was like danger, danger, danger.

But the other part of my brain was like, no Cat, like you chose to have a business. This is your business. You do get to do whatever the fuck you want. Like don’t forget that. This is your life. And I have the privilege to. Like if I have the privilege to, I should be able to.

And that was a really challenging time because my intuition knew for a very long time that I needed to… something needed to change in my business.

The real reason behind closing the mastermind, outside of wanting to spend more time with my kids, was it didn’t feel… I was not confident in selling that program, or at least how it was.

And at that time, I had two programs, and it just was more work than I wanted to put in, to be completely honest. It was a bit more than I could chew. And I could chew it. Like, I didn’t need to close the program. And I only had like three months left for the majority of the clients. But I decided to end it, and I wanted to just let it go, and I thought really deeply about it, and that’s what I did, right?

So I let go of what was working because it wasn’t serving me. It wasn’t serving the purpose, the mission that I had set out to do. Now, I could have done it a different way. I could have been a little bit more intentional about it. But anyone who knows me, that’s not really my style.

But I remember being proud of that decision. And even now, I’m really proud of that decision because it really does align with my values and being true to myself. One of my main values is being true to myself, is being me and owning all of me: owning my mistakes, owning my wins, owning my successes, owning my weaknesses, owning my story. That felt right to me.

But then in 2025, I spent so much time feeling very, very guilty and feeling very, very conflicted and really not sure where I wanted my business to go. Even though, to be honest, I had a plan on what I was going to do in 2025. But when I decided to actually go for it, what I realized is my thinking… I was so conditioned to think about my business in one lane, one way, that doing the opposite of that or changing that felt very, very dangerous.

Along with, I had a lot going on in my personal life emotionally that just was not helping the situation.

So when 2025 came, I just felt like that was a year where I just needed to slow down and really, really learn… like, what do I want? Really have a tough conversation with myself and be honest about what needs to evolve and change about me: the person, the human, the woman.

What stories do I need to let go of to reach the levels of success, money, life, experiences that I want?

I forced myself to just not push because for so long I was push, push, push, push, go, go, go, go. Just do what you got to do. Just do what you got to do. Which is good. There’s value in that. That’s so important to business. But I really did not want to keep the cycle. And that’s the thing I’ve learned. It’s like if something’s not working, you’ve got to look at it. If something’s not working, then you’ve got to stop the cycle for a second and actually look.

So I let 2025 be this time where I get to experiment a lot, where I get to play a lot, where I get to figure out what I want my business to look like in the next five years, next couple years, next year.

And every time… I played this game with myself because every time I wanted to go back to doing the same thing. And I think I did launch a couple of times and they were decent launches. I just was not in a mental place and I really felt disconnected to my business.

And it’s not even like I felt disconnected to my clients because I love coaching. I love, love, love, love, love coaching my clients. I love helping them grow. I love this work. But there was a disconnection to what I was doing and I knew I needed to look at it and solve for it and really figure that out.

I gave myself that time. But for a lot of last year, I just made myself feel so guilty about that decision. And I think towards the end of the year and earlier this year, I had so many realizations. And this year, I’ve had so many realizations. And one of those realizations is that you are fully allowed to change your mind, to pivot, to start fresh any time you want.

Now, is it going to affect your cash? Is it going to affect your business? Is it going to affect what you bring into the house? Absolutely. Not everybody has that privilege. But you get to. This is your life. This is your life.

And I think what I want to make really clear is that evolution isn’t just about business tactics. It’s about honoring the season of life that you are in and what you want to prioritize at that time.

And I’m a business major. I’ve always been a business nerd. Like, I love business. I really do. I love reading business books. I love it. But what I also have come to understand over and over and over again throughout my entire business is I’m a woman. I’m a mother. And how I grow and scale my business is going to be different.

And I don’t want to grow a business like these billionaires. They’re sad, to be honest. They’re very sad and they have sad lives. And I’m not really interested in building wealth if it doesn’t include a life that is fulfilling.

That’s just the truth. And I’m not saying that all this business growth I had was not fulfilling, but when it stopped being fulfilling… I need to look at that. I need to look at that and ask and adjust. And sometimes that could mean adjusting an offer, but sometimes that means really making a change.

Really deciding what do I want to do with this? What season am I in in my life? And how can I honor that while also doing what I need to do?

Because here’s the deal. You are going to need to evolve regardless. It doesn’t matter if it’s something in your life or if it’s something in the industry. Right now, marketing is going through a huge change. Whoever is not adjusting will be left behind. They will be left behind.

So it is so important that you realize that slowing down is not quitting. Slowing down is not quitting. Give yourself a timeframe. Give yourself a timeframe of what you need and what is the goal.

But for so long, I thought like, my God, I’m quitting my business. I’m burning it all down. I’m blah, blah, blah. And I wasn’t doing those things. I was just maturing. I was just making decisions for me and my life and my business. And I don’t have to feel fucking bad about it.

And I think what really irks me is the marketing around shame, around burning down your business and shame around not sticking it through.

Look, you do have to work really hard to grow and scale your business. You do have to keep doing the boring mundane things to grow. Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.

And then it means that that gets to be a part of the bigger picture.

Growth is not linear. It is not linear. It’s cyclical. You expand. You contract. You rebuild over and over and over. You’re going to have to evolve. You’re going to have to rebuild at many stages of your business.

And that’s where I’ve been the last four months, let’s say, is really getting very clear on what is the direction I want my business to go? And the reality is, for me, that I wanted to stop putting myself in this box of: I sell content, I sell sales and marketing, I am a business coach, this is who I am. Like, no. I wanna talk about a lot of other shit.

I want to talk about wealth, and I want to talk about marriage, and I want to talk about motherhood, and I want to talk about all these things that I was preventing myself from doing because it wasn’t the right way to do it.

And because I was thinking in such a linear way of this is how it has to be, what it turned into was me resenting so many parts of my business. And I don’t want that for you.

Don’t be mad at yourself for fucking growing, for fucking evolving. It is OK for you to give yourself time, space, flexibility to try shit out and grow, to fuck shit up, to fail, to slow down, whatever it looks like to you, to say no. It does not mean you’re going backwards. You’re gathering yourself for more expansion, intentionally.

I have never been more… I’m so excited for the next year or two of my business, where it takes me. I feel so much more certain about who I am. I feel so much more certain about the boundaries that I have. I feel so much more certain about the mother that I wanna be and that I am. About the wife that I wanna be and I am.

Like, now looking back at last year with what felt like a failure… and to be clear, my revenue took a hit. But I knew it was taking a hit. And this is why it’s so crazy because I intentionally slowed down my business so that I could get focused, really understand what I wanted, work through my personal shit.

And then when the revenue got slower, I was like, my God, I’m horrible… when I literally planned for it.

So the reason I’m creating this episode is because if you ever find yourself, or if you find yourself in a place where something is off, you’ve slowed things down, you’re trying to figure out… I just want to give you full permission to evolve. Full permission to grow. Full permission to slow down before you pick it back up again.

You are a human. You are going to evolve. And your business is going to evolve, too. And the truth is, the women who build lasting wealth understand this rhythm. They don’t just grow for growth’s sake. They expand with purpose, with intentionality. They contract to protect their energy and values. And then they rebuild stronger, smarter.

And I feel like this is exactly… I’m in this rebuilding phase in my head at least. And I feel like possibility has never been grander. I see so much for where I want to take my business and all the directions it can go. And I’m letting it be a little loosey goosey and not getting so attached to anything.

And this is exactly the type of mindset when good shit happens. Because I’ve been down this road. This is not my first rodeo. And it’s probably not yours either.

So this is my reminder to you. You have full permission to evolve. You will have phases where you’re expanding, growing, it’s fun.

You’ll have other phases where you’re really contracting and getting your systems together and really becoming an expert at what you do. And then you’re going to have those times where you got to rebuild. And it feels vulnerable. And I want you to know that that’s 100% OK. You will get out of this.

Take care of what you got to take care of. Pay the bills, do what you gotta do. If you need to get a job, if you need to get this, if you need to start doing whatever, do what you gotta do, but know that there is no problem. Nothing’s wrong with you. You’re not burning everything down. You’re fucking growing.

You never have to apologize for that. You never need to shame yourself for fucking growing. Growing is a beautiful thing. And the audacity that you have to burn something down, the audacity that it takes to start over… that shit is the shit that grows you. And don’t let nobody tell you fucking different.

Okay, my friends, I’m back, baby. Okay, I’m literally late to pick up my son. I gotta go. I’m gonna send you a big old virtual hug.

I hope you will listen to the next episode. I hope I see you next week. We are getting things moving on Show Up Real and I’m so excited. This is Cat Del Carmen 2.0 and I’m ready.

I hope you are too. And if you’re not, come listen, okay?

All right, I’ll see you later. Bye.