Violet De Ayala was my first business mentor. A first-generation Cuban-American first-generation, Violet struggled to find her place in her new world.
“I had my first child when I was 22 years old and didn’t want to work in the corporate world.”
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Instead, she thought about what business she could create for herself. “We grew up with stories about entrepreneurial people who made it to this country and kind of with little money and were able to create tremendous wealth and great businesses.”
Starting and Growing Businesses
Starting, growing, and scaling several businesses, Violet ended up in the coaching sector. She looks at life and understands that everything we need is out there. “When you are an immigrant, the narrative that you are acquiring, the stories being shared are of those people that arrived with nothing and achieved great success.” Many people will tell you that you’ll fail as an entrepreneur.
Finding Grit When You’re at the Bottom
In that darkness of being broken financially, you find beauty within yourself that inspires you to move up and keep on moving forward.
When you’re broken, that’s when you find and acquire that level of grit because you have no other option other than to fail.
The Importance of Systems
I tell my clients that y’all need systems. Take it from somebody who learned the hard way; otherwise, your business is going to turn into a dumpster fire. Oh man, that is not fun. To create systems from the beginning.
“So when you talk about scalability, you have so many different variations of scalability, but the one that I generally go to is how do you scale a brand that can serve over a million people around the world?”
“When you can add your process, procedures or streamlining, that’s when you’re on a good path to being scalable, meaning that it can duplicate itself over and over again, but it doesn’t add to your hours. The system doesn’t take away from your time, it lives beyond you.” You can literally step away for vacation, and your business will still run.
Developing my team and getting a whole group of people toward one vision and one goal is exciting! So how do we get clear on that vision and that goal so that we can show up with our mission and scale it out to a million people?
“So if I was Amanda, and I have this beautiful skill, talent, and wisdom that I’m sharing. I’m changing people’s lives. How big could this company possibly get? What’s the biggest way I can share my vision with the world?”
Violet says, once you have an idea, make sure all your action steps and words you’re using for your team align. You want to talk about your vision with your team. If you want your program to impact a million women, what does that look like? Your vision becomes part of your company DNA.
The team and the process we’ve put in place. You need to stick to that, and If you’re connected to that process, the holes don’t get bigger. You can use your systems and team to button them up.
Partnering and Cross-Promoting
Violet recommends forming partnerships. You can do this by helping other companies start their own chapters of your organization. Work with other companies to get them up and running, and then partner up so that you can serve them.
Goal Planning
Remember to reverse-engineer when you are goal-planning. Start with your goal, then think of the path you need to take to achieve your goal. Next, find out what tools, skills, and partnerships you want to make your goal attainable. Reach out to leaders, coaches, and mentors to work with you to shortcut yourself to reach your business goals faster.
Review Your Company Data
Every single month, Violet looks at her data.
She can then figure out how close she is to her milestones and goals using her data and see how she is achieving baby steps to get to her goal.
Refuting the Stereotype Narratives
“I think that many women picked up from childhood where somewhere along the way they felt they weren’t good at numbers.” And so that’s not true. It’s been proven that women are great with numbers. “I just had Stephanie on our Instagram from the Fem Global Program and she’s a financial guru. She’s proven that women are great with numbers and women are great investors.” So if you’re scared of numbers, let go of your fear and know that you can be good at numbers. If you don’t want to go there, you can always hire a bookkeeper!
Understanding Your Financial Liability
How much is going out? What are you spending dollars on? What activities bring in the most money?
You need to know these numbers because they are vital for the profitability of your business – and that is good for everyone. So you need to know your numbers, even if they aren’t great numbers.
Then you can find out how to change what you’re doing to make your numbers better the next month to create a more sustainable business.