After 20 years as a successful spa owner, Yolanda Ortiz was told by her doctor that she had had to figure out a new plan. Yolanda went back to the drawing board and figured out how to reinvent herself as a successful business coach. In this episode, Yolanda shares with host Corey Jahnke that a change in course can indeed be an opportunity in disguise. You can feel lost sometimes, but if you listen to your inner leader, you can find your way out and overcome setbacks and teach others to do the same.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Reinventing Yourself With Yolanda Ortiz

How To Turn A Setback Into A Setup For A Comeback

I’ve been on hiatus because I wanted to think about, how are we going to direct successful thinkers to find their life’s purpose and act in a way that makes them proud of what they do? This season, we’re going to focus on what I’m calling mindset marketing. This next guest that I’m going to bring on is an interesting person because we met through a marketing class run by Seth Godin. What I like about what Seth Godin talks about is you’re walking around as your own marketing message. It’s going to be fun to bring our next guest on. She’s going to talk a lot about how to find your passion and how to live in the space that you’re in. Her name is Yolanda Ortiz. She’s an international business coach. She brings her passion and knowledge to you and your business. She inspires her clients to be their best through leadership and communication training, honest and objective feedback and accountability. Yolanda has been an entrepreneur for several years, beginning with owning her own successful spa for twenty years. What’s going to happen here is we’re going to get real-world actionable advice, not conjecture and theory. Let’s let Yolanda help you find your passion or reignite your passion for your business and help you remove the barriers to success. How does that sound? Yolanda, welcome to our show. Thanks for coming in. How are you?

I’m great. Thank you for having me.

It’s a pleasure. I was hoping we could start with a little bit of your background and what you learned about owning a business for many years.

I originally owned a spa for a little over twenty years. I come from the health and beauty industry. The one thing that I learned that I would love to share is that in owning your own business, we make a lot of mistakes. We think that things are going to go great. It’s almost like taking spaghetti and throwing it against the wall and seeing what sticks. That’s how I started more like the technician in my business. I didn’t know how to run a business. It was extremely successful in spite of me. You don’t know what you don’t know. A few years into owning my business, a friend gave me the book, The E-Myth. I don’t know if you are aware of what that book is, The Entrepreneurial Myth by Michael Gerber. Basically, it helped teach me how to systematize my business and look at my business as a whole. There are a lot of people out there who are lucky to have that point of view right off the bat. I wasn’t one of them. I had to learn it. I loved what I did. I love being a technician, but I had to learn how to run my business in a profitable way. That’s how I started. That’s where I’m coming from.

What an interesting story because many people find themselves in the middle of a mess that they themselves created. The hardest part of getting out of that mess as the loss of confidence, the loss of self-image and the struggle. How did you talk to yourself and teach yourself that it was okay, like you say, to throw spaghetti against the wall and not have it stick?

At the beginning, it was tough because I am a perfectionist. If something didn’t work out, I took it personally. Finally, one day you realize, “This is my business. This isn’t me. Let’s see what we can do to make it better. Maybe that system didn’t work. Let’s go back to the drawing board and try it again.” It became fun trying to create systems that work that make you more efficient and more profitable.

I love the way you said that. It made it fun. Brian Tracy was one of my favorite people that I follow. He says it this way. He says that successful people are successful because they learn how to explain things in a way that unsuccessful people can’t. For instance, if you get stuck parking at the mall and you’re out in Timbuktu, you can grumble, whine and complain about the long walk you’ll have to get to the mall or you can say, “This is wonderful. I’ve got a chance now to fill my lungs with some air, to get some extra steps.” I like how you reframe that for yourself. Where did you go from the spa business to where you are now? How did that happen?

Seventeen years into owning my business, I started to have pain in my hands. I went to an orthopedic surgeon thinking it was my carpal tunnel where you’ll have surgery in four to six weeks you’ll be back on track. Instead what he said was, “You have the beginnings of arthritis in your hands. This is about stopping what you’re doing if you want to have any quality of life for your hands in the future.” This was absolutely devastating for me because I had wanted to be in the health and beauty industry and own a spa since I was probably sixteen. I built my business from nothing. I basically put my car up for collateral for a loan to get started and poured blood, sweat and tears into my business. Here’s the surgeon telling me, “I would find something else to do with your life.”

I was like, “What is this about?” I went home. I had a pity party for myself for probably about two weeks and gave myself that deadline. I’m going to take two weeks and I’m going to feel bad for myself. I told my story to my family, to my friends, to my clients and anybody who would listen, “Look at this terrible thing that’s happened to me.” At the end of two weeks of telling the story nonstop, I realized, “I’m done with that. The story is done. It’s time to move on and start researching.” I didn’t know where to go in the beginning, but I had done some valuable work with Co-Active Coaching, CTI, a coach training company. I looked at my values to see what was there? Who am I? What is it that sparks me? What motivates me in life? That led me to coaching.

I went through the certification and training that you go through. I thought that I was going to just be coaching in the health and beauty industry because there are a lot of people in that industry that don’t know their numbers. They don’t know how to create a profit or look at their throughput to price their products and services properly. As I got started, what I recognize is I have this gift of helping people find their passion through this value work and help leaders and teams learn how to focus on working together and understanding how you as a leader have an impact. When you walk into a room, you have an impact on the people in that room. I’m not talking about CEOs. I’m not talking about high-level executives. I’m talking about everybody because CTI has this leadership model that everybody can be a leader.

There are five steps to this. What happens is you realize, “Life can be so interesting if you know that you’re a leader.” If you can empower yourself to be a leader in front, that’s about, “Come with me. I have this great idea” or you can be the leader behind helping the team move forward. You can be the leader besides helping them right next to them, “Here’s the topic. Here’s where we’re headed. This project is great.” You can be a leader in the field. A leader in the field is fascinating because it’s tapping into your intuitive side and understanding, “This project is slowing down. The morale isn’t great on this project. Things aren’t going well.” Teaching people how to become leaders themselves and empowering them instead of top-down leadership, it was the gift I had. That’s what moves me in helping and helping people listen to their inner leader.

One of the things that we see a lot in entrepreneurs is the lack of leadership. “I want to try and do it all myself because no one can do it as good as me.” Do you ever see that out in the field?

All the time. What’s interesting about that is it’s because you work so hard to build something. You’re afraid to let go a little bit in fear that your special trademark will go away. Instead, if you teach others and you create a process on how you do it, then now you’ve empowered someone else to learn to be that leader.

Especially brilliant because one of the things that I want to make sure that we’re all clear on Successful Thinkers is this is the heart of the Successful Thinker philosophy. We want you to be able to be out there living exceptional lives. The only way you can do that in this world is to exponentially expand your impact through others. I want to thank you, Yolanda, for sharing that idea because when we tried to do by ourselves, the quality of life that we have is literally garbage. One of the things that you must have had to do with some serious soul searching to make your coaching business happen and to find your direction in life. Can you talk a little bit about that and how you reinvented yourself and the pain points you might have gone through along the way?

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What’s interesting about this is that after many years of owning a spa and wondering what am I going to do next and looking at my values, it was hard to say, “Can I be something else? How can I reinvent myself to have the value that I brought every day to my clients, to my spa and have that impact in the community? How can I do that?” It was scary. I remember at a certain time, I was going to coach training. It was my very first coach training. I get on the plane by myself, looking at my phone before I shut it off. In comes this email of other people who are going to be participating in this immersion training. I start looking at the bios and I have this running thing in my head, which I tell my clients are your saboteurs. I have this saboteur in my head saying, “Look at these people. You aren’t good enough to be part of this training class.”

I’m already off a plane. I’ve got my seatbelt on. I’m going to San Diego. Whether or not I believe it, I’m there. The hotel room, everything’s ready. I had this tough conversation with myself all the way there. I got there. I felt a little inadequate, but I said to myself, “You’re here. Make the best of what you have.” That’s when I opened up and found that this was a passion and I had it from my heart to help people. It wasn’t just about all the trainings you learn in your head, in your brain, the courses. It was from my heart and that spoke to me in ways that helped me open up doors, continue my training and become better. Instead of just dipping my toe in the water, I jumped and never looked back.

I’m proud of you. It’s a difficult conversation to have with yourself when you’re struggling with impostor syndrome. Successful Thinkers, I want you to hear what Yolanda said because everyone from Brian Tracy to Seth Godin to Yolanda and myself have these conversations with themselves all the time. What Successful Thinkers do is they learn to redirect that focus away from, “I can’t,” to, “What if it works?” That is exciting. Were there a number of obstacles that you needed to overcome to launch your coaching business? If so, how did you go about overcoming those?

The obstacles that were put in front of me, I have to say, were put there by myself. I truly believe you can do anything you want to do as long as you take the steps and move forward every day, even if it’s a little baby step. I let my clients know there’s something called micro habits. I don’t know if you’re familiar with micro habits. There’s a story in the book about a guy who wanted to floss his teeth and he couldn’t get to make it happen. He started out flossing one tooth every night. I know that sounds ridiculous, but what do you think happened by the seventh or eighth night that he’s flossing that one tooth?

I’m guessing he got to all of them.

Absolutely. You start this small micro habit and your brain is like, “We’re flossing our teeth.” It doesn’t know that you’re only flossing one. It’s like, “This is the motion. This is what we’re doing.” By creating those small micro habits, it helps move you forward into your bigger goals. I had to utilize those baby steps, those micro habits of, “Now I have to put myself out there and try and coach. I made a goal. I’m going to try and get three coaching clients. I’m going to coach X amount of hours a week.” These were my obstacles and I had to take them with little tiny baby steps.

One thing that was interesting for me is I said to myself, “You have that saboteur. Who’s going to listen to you? Who’s going to find what you have to say interesting?” I have naturally throughout my whole life been a coach to my clients, to my family and friends through the years. You have to say, “This is who I am. This is my value and I’m going to live it.” I had someone tell me a long time ago, “If you build your church, the congregation comes.” I know that sounds like a strange analogy to use but it’s true.

 

Corey, you know this for yourself with your podcast, you have great listeners because you opened it up and you built it yourself. You opened the doors. It’s the same thing. Those obstacles for me I handled with baby steps, but also you have to change your perspective. I’m big about helping my clients understand that where they are right now in that moment is just one perspective. There are other perspectives you can take so I can teach you how to have another perspective. For instance, Corey, do you have a window? Look out your window. Tell me what you see.

I do. I’m seeing green and orange. It is a perfectly wonderful day in Wisconsin.

What stands out to you when you look out your window?

Right now, there’s a huge tree about 30 feet away from my window.

What stands out about that tree?

The fact that it’s mostly light green, but there’s a couple of orange and yellow splotches on it. We’re getting into the end of fall here.

Tell me about the fall. What does that bring to you?

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That’s my favorite time of year because that’s when I like to go for good long walks without getting all sweaty and bugged up.

It brings walks. When you take long walks, what happens? What do you feel?

I feel so much better about myself because my lungs are fresh and I’m getting in that exercise that I promised myself I’d get all summer. I always take my dog with me.

It’s a great moment for you to relax into who you are. If you are having a difficult time or trying to look at a situation or an obstacle in one way, now I might say to you, “Let’s take the tree perspective the next time you have an obstacle and see how you can bring that perspective to this situation right now.” Do you see how bringing that perspective could change the way you’re looking at this situation or obstacle in your life?

It’s automatically going to be a positive perspective because the tree makes me all warm and fuzzy. That’s brilliant.

Thank you. That is part of my coach training, what I do and bringing a different perspective to my clients. Obviously, that’s a tiny little sample of what that’s like. It’s important for life. As we were talking earlier, if you’re in a job that you necessarily aren’t happy with the boss or your career, finding a different perspective instead of quitting could change your job for the better or your career. Even looking at your boss with a different perspective could give you what you need to move forward.

One of the things that you may or may not be aware of is that in my book, The Successful Thinker, we talk about the Law of the Story, which essentially says that your life is being run by this story that you made up. If you want a better life, you have to tell yourself a better story. We’re in sync with the idea that there’s probably more than one perspective involved in what’s going on with you. Tony Robbins says, “Look at a situation and ask yourself what’s great about this?” It sounds like that somewhere around what we’re talking about. Tell me a little bit about your coaching company. Please tell the audience the name of it because I love the name of it and I love your logo.

 

Thank you. The name of my business is Corazon Business Coaching. Corazon in Spanish means heart. My tagline is, “Working on the heart of your business and that part of your business is you.” This is about coaching you, helping you open up and becoming better as a leader, as a business owner.

One of the parts that you’ve hit on and I want to talk about in the leadership perspective is one thing that a lot of people don’t take into consideration is the perspective of the people around them. Do you coach your clients to look at what’s going on with the people they’re trying to lead or the people in their environments and talk about their perspectives as well?

I do. One thing that helps my clients open up and understand a little bit more about their impact as a leader for others is I do some assessments and I don’t know if you’re familiar with DISC. I do several different assessments. I love to put DISC out there primarily for my clients because most people think that the assessments are for them, “This is how I communicate,” but it goes one step further. Maybe this is your communication style, but now take your communication style and start looking at your team and understand how they communicate. If you know this is your communication style, now you can adjust it for your staff or your team.

I would argue that you could do the same thing in your personal relationships as well.

With anybody you come in contact with, once you understand what motivates you, what your values are, how you communicate, this makes you better operating in your world.

That’s a smart way to think about it. Some of the things we’re learning in the Seth Godin class and in the book that Seth wrote called This Is Marketing, what you want to ask yourself is “What is the other person’s perspective on the message that I’m sending? Am I sending the message that I’m sending?” I’m going to guess that based on what you said, if you’re sending the message in the wrong format, it’s almost invariably received in the wrong format, wouldn’t you think?

Absolutely. When I coach my clients on, “Let’s look at your customer. Who is your customer?” They’ll say, “My customer is between the ages of 30 and 40, primarily male or female.” They give you this whole demographic. I say, “Why do you think they come to you though?” The very first answer out of their mouth is, “Because we provide this and this,” which basically is their mission statement or their vision. It’s like, “No, that’s what you bring, but why do you think they come to you?” When you can sit with that question, let that marinate and think about, “Why do my clients come to me?” It opens up a whole new ballgame for you in marketing, advertising and even the services you provide.

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My one friend talks about not just the demographics, but trying to understand the psychographics. What’s keeping these people awake at night? What is she thinking about as she’s trying to get through her day? I often ask leaders to accept the idea that their employees are their biggest customers. What do you think about that idea?

I love that idea. That’s fascinating because if you know what your employees are hoping for, dreaming about and wanting in life, that makes you a better leader because now you’re able to provide a healthier work environment.

One of the things that are interesting is that people will say, “Why is that my job or my responsibility to care what Yolanda is looking for from me?” Can you help our audience understand that?

I’m not going to get this quote perfectly, but Zig Ziglar had a quote that I love and that is, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care about them.”

One of the things that’ll happen is if the people don’t think you care, essentially, they will fire you even if they haven’t even left the job yet. They will emotionally distance themselves from you. I believe that they’ll even go as far as in some cases to sabotage your career. It makes a lot of sense to look at that perspective.

I’m always listening to webinars and I’m trying to better myself. I was listening to a webinar in one of my coach training and they talked about personal disruption and where are you or your employee on the scale of personal disruption? Meaning there’s an S curve like you would have for stocks and bonds. You’re going to use it for you as a person. Are you on the launch pad of your employment? Are you in the sweet spot, which usually lasts three to four months or are you in the mastery? What’s interesting about this, if you know this about your employees, you know if you need to challenge them, give them a disruption. For instance, if you have an employee in the mastery section, they tend to get bored easily because there’s nothing more to learn.

When we learned dopamine is produced in our body, which helps with innovation. If you can challenge your mastery employee to do something different like maybe, “We run this report this way all the time and we bring it to the board in this manner,” why don’t you change it up? It’s something as simple as that. If you have somebody in the launchpad area beginning on the S-curve, then it’s all about the challenge. They want to learn. They wanted to do more. They’re creating. They’re innovative. They say that you want 15% in the launch area, 75% of your employees in the sweet spot and 15% in mastery. If you can stop and think about your employees and look at them in a way that is, “Where are they?” and maybe “Where are you?” and challenge yourself. This provides such a great outlook on leadership in a way that maybe you’ve never thought of before.

 

I like that because we had done a survey before we put out The Successful Thinker. One question that I asked was what gives you the most enjoyment and fulfillment at your job and what makes you most likely to keep your job? I thought it was going to be something like salary, benefits and respect but the number one answer and it was over 70% was the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution at work. If you think about that, you’ve hit that right on the head. What’s going to be meaningful to that seasoned employee who’s in the mastery space? What’s going to be meaningful to those people who are starting out? Sometimes we give those people busy work because we don’t have time to train them or we don’t feel that we want to invest in them until we know if they’re going to stay and things like that. You’ve done a great job explaining why that’s a huge mistake. Do you have any more commentary on that? I’m fascinated by the way your mind works.

The more you can challenge yourself or your employees and disrupt yourself, the more innovative you can become and the better your team is or the barrier company becomes.

Like you were saying, a perfect example would be, “I’m going to be in the spa business forever. I got this business nailed. I know how to run it. It’s all going smooth,” and something happens. In your case it was arthritis, but in some cases, it’s a market change or obsolescence. If you’ve made a lot of money making CDs or selling CD players, you’re probably not doing that right now. I liked the idea of challenging yourself.

It’s important to keep you moving forward. It could be very small like I said, the micro habit. It could be something small that you try if you don’t want to put yourself out there like being on a podcast.

There are podcasts out there for everyone. It’s amazing how nichetized they are. As you’re looking out at your future, how do you go about setting your goals and approaching your dreams for that long-term, short-term and medium-term? How do you go about that, Yolanda, and how do you encourage your customers to go about that?

I love the fact that you can create your own vision personally and for your business. Some people might know it as a strategic objective, some people might notice a point of view or vision. You should write a vision for yourself personally and for your business. You can make it a three, five or ten-year vision. I like to make it a three-year vision and revisit it. The more detailed you can write out what you want, how you see your life unfolding or what do you want your business to look like, the more detailed you can create it, the more you can see the progress by pulling out some metrics from your vision and creating goals from that. A lot of times people make the mistake of saying, “I need to sit down. It’s January 1 and I need to make ten goals for myself for the year.” There’s nothing wrong with that. If you don’t have a vision or you don’t know your values, odds are your goals are going to fizzle come March because there’s no passion. There’s no heart. There’s no reason. You have no GPS to move forward. That’s the first thing I do.

The second thing I do is ask, “Why is it important for me to achieve this goal now?” Sometimes we think this is the right time to have this goal, but if you stop and you think about it, maybe it doesn’t come until after this happens. Maybe there’s a step ahead of that. That’s the beginning. I break them down into smaller goals. If I have three years, obviously I’m going to break that down into what do I need to achieve in a year? What do I need to achieve in months or days or weeks? I go back and I look at that every week to see where I’m at. The very most important thing I could say is to celebrate your small wins. We don’t do that enough and it’s important. Number one, for me, it keeps me motivated to know, “I did that. I got that done.” Even though it’s small, but we have to come to our life with grace and compassion, not for others but for ourselves. That’s how I look at goals.

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I love the way you said have a vision because otherwise, it becomes a to-do list. There’s not much real energy put behind it to do list. Essentially the way I understood you, you are talking about a to-be list. Tell me a little bit about how the guests out there can get in touch with you, learn to work with you and learn more about what you’re doing.

You can definitely go to my website and that’s CorazonBusinessCoaching.com. You can email me, Yolanda@CorazonBusinessCoaching. You can also text or call me, feel free, my number is (719) 510-0075. I’d love to chat with you. We can talk about what you’d like to achieve for your or your personal life. I give a free consultation because it’s super important to find out if we’re a good fit for each other. If I’m the coach you’re looking for, if I can help you get motivated in what it is you wanted to achieve.

One thing I wanted to point out is you said an interesting thing, “If we are a good fit for each other.” I’m under the impression these days that a lot of people are unhappy in business because they’re doing business with the wrong clients or the wrong customers. Can you speak a little bit about that?

I truly believe there is a fit between me and the client I bring on. I definitely believe that for me, you have to be driven. You have to want to change, want to understand how to grow and be better. A funny story is there is a guy who was an exterminator. He thought that everybody was his customer. “Everybody wants to get rid of bugs and so everybody is my customer.” When we got to talking and honed it in, what he found out is that people who own apartment buildings or hotels was really his customer as an exterminator. It’s about who do you want to service and who do you want to come to you as a customer? What makes you happy? As a business owner, you have to know, “Who do I want coming to my business? What type of person do I want? What do they look like? What do they want?” When I say a good fit, that’s what that’s about.

Many people think that anyone with a wallet is their customer. I wanted to finish this episode talking a little bit about passion because we were talking and you mentioned that sometimes people think, “If I’m not passionate where I am, why bother being here?” I wanted you talking a little bit about how people can find their passion and a little more about reframing or changing their perspective as you talked about earlier in the episode. Is that okay with you?

Sure. One thing I do to help people find their passion is I go through a values exercise. It goes pretty deep. It’s not just surface, “I value honesty. That might be a good thing to value. That seems like a good value.” We work on it, create, go through exercises and find out what is your value for you personally and through that, we can find your passion. As you were saying, Corey, if you’re in a job and you’re feeling like, “This isn’t my passion and maybe I should be looking elsewhere, but I can’t afford to jump right now,” or “I like certain parts of this job,” it’s about taking that passion that you have, the values you have and finding that where you are in this job that’s not 100% perfect.

As we know, there’s always going to be something that’s not right where we’re at. There’s no 100% utopia in your job. I wish there was, but we always have something. It’s being able to find that passion inside of you. One of my values is music so I love to play a tiny excerpt of music for my clients. It could be at the beginning when they come to the session and they’re in their head about business or about something else. I have them stop, take a deep breath, listen and it brings out something different. It’s magical for the session. If you can find what honors your value and bring that passion into where you are now, it makes a world of difference.

I believe that’s where leadership plays in. Great leaders understand that you don’t have a talent for everything and you don’t have a love for everything. If you can find people to surround yourself with who can fill in those gaps or do the things that you don’t do well, you can exponentially increase your life enjoyment and the financial revenue of your business and everything about your life. Successful Thinkers, I want you to give our good friend, Yolanda, a round of applause out there. I think that Yolanda was brave in stepping out and sharing her message with us. It was a lot of valuable information. I believe that this is an episode that I will go ahead and read several times.

I want you to ask yourself the questions that Yolanda asked, “What is it that you value? What is it that will bring passion into your life, your job, your relationships?” Life was meant to be extraordinary. Life was meant to be exceptional. You’re a Successful Thinker and you deserve all of that. Thank you so much for tuning in. Remember, no matter what happens out there, I believe in you. I know that you can live the exceptional life that you were born to live. Thank you so much for your time. You all have a wonderful rest of your day.

Important Links:

• Yolanda Ortiz
• The E-Myth
• Co-Active Coaching
• The Successful Thinker
• This Is Marketing
• Corazon Business Coaching
• www.CorazonBusinessCoaching.com
• Yolanda@CorazonBusinessCoaching

About Yolanda Ortiz