Hi everyone. My name is Patrick Kakil and
this episode really made me think.
The way you present yourself, the confidence you exude and the
relationships you have really impact the value you bring to
the table, and understanding what that value is allows you to
take hold of those factors and influence them.
Helping me understand all of that and more is my friend
Francesca Diaz. She has an electrifying amount
of energy, which is addicting, and I'm sure you'll like this
episode. Enjoy what is like your
day-to-day like nowadays. Okay, it really transitions.
There are days where I'm behind the scenes cooking creative
stuff for my clients, Yeah. Or there are days where I'm
having client after client of 1 to one calls.
And then there are weeks where I have, I have to be on stage
several times a week. So it really depends on the
season. So you can imagine during summer
it's more 1:00 to 1:00 work actually now it's more being on
stage, being working with groups with clients, corporate clients.
It's really exciting, nice and what what is like your favorite
thing? Because I can imagine one-on-one
conversations have a very different dynamic from standing
on stage and presenting material there.
Oh, I love that question. I actually like them all.
They are of course different in their own way, as you said.
But there's something magical that happens when I'm on stage.
I think I was designed, since I'm a little a young kid, to be
on stage and to work with big groups of people.
It's insane. I usually say that I feel like
I'm a little bit beyond myself and I give absolutely everything
from myself to the people, so I absolutely love that.
On the other side, I absolutely also love to be 1 to one with
with a client and see them flourish and see them come to
realizations that they never thought before.
So they they all have their own special secret sauce.
I see that. I think I I align with that as
well. For me though, doing conferences
and standing on stage, even conversations like this, if I
were to have my previous self like from 15 years ago, they
would be like what the hell are you doing like this?
This could never be me, basically, but you already said
from early on from a young age this was always you.
Yeah, yeah. It's very weird.
I was afraid of it, so I had to do a lot of work to pass through
that fear. Yeah, but if I look back enough,
I see it always there, OK? Excitement and the will and
especially the intention to teach and share what excites me
and what I know can make a difference.
I think the bug was always there since I'm a very young kid and I
mean I've told you this before, even in pre conversations like
the way you speak. It's so eloquent.
Was this also always there? Because, I mean, English is a
secondary language for both you and me, so it would have to take
some practice, you know? How'd you get really good at?
This, Yeah, doing it a lot. I think.
Also in my corporate career I used to guide groups and do lots
of workshops with people. And as a consequence of being a
leader amongst people, I had to talk a lot and guide people a
lot. Yeah, I think that helped.
But I think I can tell you a small story for my childhood
that already shows how much practice I was getting when I
was a kid. When I was six years old, my
favorite play was to arrive at home.
I have twin brothers, brother and sister.
They are twins amongst themselves, 3 1/2 years younger
than me. So you can imagine I'm six and
they are three, something exactly.
You're in control. Yeah, Oh my God, four children.
But I arrived at home. And my favorite play was to sit
them around and just teach them everything I learned at school.
And my parents thought I was actually playing until the day
when my young brother is sitting at the breakfast table with a
serious a cereal box, and he starts reading the labels and
they realized she's not playing. She's actually teaching them.
So that was the amount of excitement that I got from it.
So it started young. Yeah, that's funny because from
from my point of view, when I see people teaching, I always
consider that not everyone does that, right?
And it's very special to have that from a early on kind of
age. I think it it makes sense
because if you have siblings, you're like do this like this is
what I learned. It's like the people you
interact with the most family and then friends of course.
So it's really funny to hear that that from a young age was
always there. Yeah.
And a very good practice as well.
And I start realizing that more and more the the older I get is
that. They were very tough crowd.
They were 3, 1/2 years old, so I had to practice how to keep them
engaged, how to keep them. I didn't want to put them there
at first. I wanted them to love that as
much as I did. And I think that gave me
practice on reading the the room, understanding how to bring
excitement to people around what I believe.
It's important. So I think the practice also
started there. Do you still do that?
Do you still have those same interactions with your siblings?
Now it's different. It's more equal I.
Learned from them as much as they learned from me.
That's good. And I'm very glad that we
evolved in that way as well. That's awesome.
Do you have siblings by I? Do you have 3?
Three, yeah, you guys are four. We're four.
That's amazing, yeah. But there's quite an age
difference, like my oldest younger brother, let's say is 7
years of difference. OK then my sister is 10 years of
difference with me and then the youngest brother is 16 years of
difference. Oh, so you.
It's quite a difference. It's quite a difference, yeah.
Yeah. Like he's going to high school
now and he's, he's going to the same high school as me.
And I'm like who who's still there teaching and some some
teachers still are there, which is quite funny to see.
Yeah. And some of them knew the older
brother, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Even my mom went to that same school.
It's from, from the same little city.
They always stayed there and I recently, well recently like 3-4
years ago moved to Amsterdam. But other than that I always
stayed in the same city. We moved around a lot, like four
or five times, OK, but always within the same city.
Oh, cool. So you kept your friends?
Who kept your the the school? Yeah.
When I went to high school, it was weird because I had been to
probably three or four primary schools, and then from there
people would Remember Me or I would recognize people, or there
was one person which I completely did not recognize and
they knew my name. And I'm like, who is this guy?
Like it didn't make sense to me. Because you interacted with so
many people, yeah. But then they they also had a
growth spurt. Like they looked like an adult
to me. And I was 12.
There's no way you would recognize them as well, right?
Yeah, exactly. I guess that gave you a lot of
practice with people. Maybe I I still am very bad at
keeping up with my network. It's probably like why I didn't
recognize people. But yeah, it was.
It was a funny high school experience just because of that.
Yeah. And then moving into uni was
completely different than you meet new people from different
cities and you're like, this is actually, it's quite big.
Yeah, there's a little world out there.
Wow. Yeah.
But I saw and also in a conversation we had before that
you started out as an aerospace engineer, mechanical engineer,
which is completely different than the thing you're doing now.
Can you kind of start with that in mind and then lead up to what
you're doing now? Cool.
I can start from the beginning. Yeah, indeed.
I have a master in aerospace engineering.
Very, very nerdy. Sounds awesome.
Yeah. Yeah.
It really was, and it was those courses where you have. 500
people and three girls in the full audience, so but indeed
very, very nerdy. I finished my studies back in
Portugal, so I'm originally Portuguese and I got this
amazing, exciting opportunity to come to the Netherlands and work
in the high tech campus. The Silicon Valley of Europe,
right. And I'm like, wow.
And so back then I I leave my family behind.
And I also my my boyfriend today, my husband.
And I say, OK, I'm going to make this work.
I arrive at the the office super excited, building technology to
the world. Wow.
And I look around and say, Oh my God, what have I done?
Everyone was 20-30 years older than me and I was by far the
the, the only woman of of the department.
OK, I'm a little bit out of place, but I'm used to this.
I'm going to make it work and I I do lots of leadership
training, stakeholder management, you name it.
I did it back then and it started bearing fruit.
I was already leading from a very, very young age groups,
small groups of engineers much older than me.
And building technology there actually inspired me and and
excited me. That's good.
Indeed I was. I was so happy about that.
But there was, there was something that I didn't know how
to fix and I kept on bumping into it.
I can give you a few examples. I remember being in a meeting
room with my colleagues and other stakeholders and giving my
opinion and nobody hears it. And then my colleague next to me
says that exactly the same thing.
Word by word and everyone says yes, let's do that.
And I'm like, what just happened?
That's the sad truth. Yeah, and what It just kept on
happening until the point when I do this amazing presentation.
So I thought it had a lot of value for the full department.
So I thought, OK, this is going to be deployed, it's going to
have impact. I do the presentation and
nothing. Crickets.
So what's happening? Yeah, so I asked help a feedback
behind the closed door from the only one other woman of the the
area where I was working. She was already quite a senior
in the company and I just behind closed doors.
Hey, can you tell me what's going on?
Yeah, what just happened? You saw the presentation, right?
She just looks at me disappointed and says Francisca,
you just look like a girl. What?
OK. You look like a girl.
You didn't react like that, I think.
And then I went home to rent what?
I look like a girl. I just brought an amazing value
to the company, right? I just did all of this work.
I presented it. My colleagues are out there in
flip flops and jeans, and I'm the one who looks like a girl.
Why does that matter? But if I was honest with myself,
I went to the mirror, took a little bit of courage and
objectively looked at myself. She was right.
But in in what way did she mean that?
If I would look at myself in the mirror, I still looked like a
student coming out of university.
I was not showing up in my body language in the way I dressed,
in the way I spoke, like the power woman version of myself
that I had been creating and developing in my brain, right
with all of those capabilities and already leading people.
I was showing up, unsure, and that energy was being perceived
and received by everyone else. They were receiving that energy.
So I said myself again. I have something to do here.
Either I'm stubborn and I keep on bumping into the same wall
until I have to give up because this is annoying, way too
annoying and painful, or I choose to do something about it.
I choose to embody what that version of Power Woman that is
brewing inside of my head means when I interact with people,
when I move, when I dress. And I didn't want to become a
Darth Vader version of a businessman.
I think you know that, right? Yeah, exactly.
It was not my character. I wanted to stay authentic, so I
did. The moment I did that, my full
reality shifted. I will got promoted twice in a
row. Started leading the
international teams, presenting programs for the full company,
which is a wide world company. The best the people that were
challenging me before. Now we're coming for me to
advise and I'm like, what just happened?
It looks like I just took the red pill from Matrix.
So I said myself, OK, I need to start doing the same for other
women and women because I'm a woman and and it's very close to
my heart. It had been my own experience,
right? And I start doing, they start
getting great results, I get a certification and then to the
point that I said this is my life's work.
I really want people to feel the way I feel authentic, right in
their skin, getting to where they want to get while feeling
amazing. I love that, Yeah.
Can you kind of deep dive into what changes you made?
Because that's still kind of unclear for me.
You said at some point like, people were against you or they
weren't really hearing the value that you were bringing,
presenting, or just by virtue of not hearing your opinion and
having the same opinion be heard from a different person.
But then something shifted. Yes.
And I didn't recognize how big the shift was until I could look
back and and really see the the results of it and how I was
feeling. I can give you 2 very clear
examples. Before the shift I would wake up
in the morning and I would get dressed and look at myself in
the mirror without even recognizing it.
I recognize that afterwards, right?
Looking at myself and say am I worthy of being there?
They are much older than me. Do I have what it takes to be
there? And the way I was dressing
myself also showed that I was keeping myself small and I
wasn't being authentic. I wasn't showing my personality.
I didn't even know what my personal brand stood for right
afterwards. What I did was understanding
what my secret sauce is. When I enter a room, how do I
shift it right? We are all different.
We we all have different secret sauces.
And if we don't own it, we cannot use it as our own
superpower. So I just discover that.
And then I learned to embody it. How do I translate that in the
way I dress right? How do I dress as my own version
of authority that makes me feel amazing in the morning?
Like I'm ready and worthy and I'm going to make it right?
And how do I enter a room always confident in myself without
having to second guess if I'm worthy or not to be in that
room? So we are talking about mindset,
we are talking about the way I dress and setting up everything
at home so it's easy in the morning.
And also, how do I move and how does that help me stay authentic
and in my power? Yeah, it's it's strange for me
also looking back that the way others perceive you like your
image, what you have on you, like the way they perceive you,
completely exudes a lot in what they see.
The way you present or the information that is there, it's
it shouldn't be there. I think objectively, but the
fact that it is there is kind of, yeah, you have to
accommodate for it. And I don't like the fact that
you have to accommodate for it. I I look back and like I would
show up to assignments and I I always travelled with public
transport. And then from there by the way,
yeah, like completely. And people will be like why
don't you have a car? Why don't you have a license?
And the only reason I got a license was so I could tell
people I have a license. I just don't like driving.
That's not an excuse. Public transport Exactly.
Yeah. Now I have the option, yeah.
And even then, like I would have a skateboard and I would skate
from my my stop and then 10 minutes to where my office would
be. How cool is that, by the way?
But yeah, I never looked back and said, oh, this does matter
in the way how people perceive me.
Because yeah, I just came out of college.
It makes sense that I'm young, makes sense to still have a
skateboard. But if I do that now, people
might look at me weird, or it might take away from the
information on the value I bring.
You felt that. Did you have experiences where
where you've clearly recognized that was happening?
Not really. But at some point I did get
remarks like like it's odd that still I do that and I'm like,
why is that? Like I don't.
I don't understand it, but I do perceive that.
Oh, I love your examples because that was a big part of my
experience as well was understanding, Hey, hey, wait a
minute. There's bias in here, right?
What can I do? I can either fight it and just
keep on resisting it, or I can find out how can Bias play in my
favour while I'm staying authentic.
So I can still, it's not my case, but I can go on my skating
boards to the office and still show up as my power version.
What does that mean? What other buttons can I tweak
to show off that my personal brand is authentic yet an
authority in this environment? And that's possible?
That's something that it's possible to do, yeah.
But now that you've been helping people more so, even on a full
time basis, what what do you usually talk to them about or
what do you usually change? Is there any like silver thread
amongst the people that you've helped that usually you work on?
I love that question, so I have. I created in the meantime a
program that helps in this case. Usually I mostly work with women
on the 1:00 to 1:00 with corporate.
I work with everyone. Usually I have a mix of men and
women. I absolutely love it, but I'll
give you an example of the one to one programs.
What I do is I work together with the other woman to help her
bring out and come to the realization of what her secret
sauce is. So basically her personal brand
natural, something that she naturally does when she enters a
room without having to make any extra effort when she's feeling
good. We all have that secret sauce.
So we find out what that secret sauce is and how does it bring a
lot of value to the environment where where she is.
Then what we do is we unearth her personal style.
And how So? The personal style that aligns
not only with her secret sauce, which is something called
behavioral, and it's something rational as well, right?
But also with the natural beauty of one's body and complexion.
And I can tell you, I I've, I saw that in myself.
But I also see that in a lot of my clients, a lot of energy
being wasted and not accepting the natural beauty and the
natural features that we are that we have and fighting
against it, and that only detracts from our confidence.
So I help a woman find and embrace and celebrate her own
natural beauty. With a specific, bespoke
personal style that brings everything together and helps
her get where she wants to go. Yeah, for me the the hardest
challenge I think because that's also sometimes what I have
struggle with, with myself is how do you figure out what
someone's secret sauce is, what what they bring to the table,
right? Because looking at myself and my
past experience now, I think it's it's partly to the way I
communicate things or the way I can make simple, more complex
topics. But I would have to practice
that I I have to have a certain amount of experience before I
could say, OK, this is what I'm good at, and still then maybe a
little bit of impostor syndrome. Am I really good at that
compared to other people like that?
Is still in there? We all feel that either way,
it's just a matter of feeding the other voice.
Yeah, I'm doing it, and I'm doing it since I'm a kid.
Only I didn't realize I was doing it right, exactly.
But then how do you help people just from those conversations
figure out what the secret sauce is?
Because I feel like that needs a lot of depth.
I love it. OK, it's several folds, but I'll
highlight a few of it. The important items is #1,
awareness. Having a look at your day-to-day
interactions and really do usually journaling really helps.
When you write down things, things get a little bit more
clarity. Yeah, understanding.
OK, I have these interactions today.
How did I shift the energy of the room, especially when I was
at ease? Because that's when magic
happens, right? How did I shift the energy of
this person? How?
What did I contribute with right And really start keeping
awareness around those. Something that is precious is
also to have a look at our past, although most of the times we
try not to and we look at ourselves.
I could have done this better or whatever really, just look at it
from. An unbiased perspective and say,
OK, as I was telling you, if I look back, I was already
teaching since I was a very young girl, right?
I already enjoyed spending time with people and teaching them
and be around groups, right. So what is that for you?
What were you when you were at your freest happy kid?
You know that feeling when you're a kid in Christmas,
really excited. If you look at those moments,
where were you? What were you doing?
That's the there's already a hint of your secret thoughts in
there, yeah? And then we bring everything
together with some embodiment exercises, because if you stay
in your head, I love what you said my imposter syndrome were
popping. So it will say really, am I
really that good at it? Right.
So I have some embodiment exercises that I do together
with my clients that allows them to shift from.
Possibility and rationality and precision mindset to a more
expanded possibility mindset. It's all about movement.
I'm talking to them while we are moving.
It activates different parts of the brain and it's beautiful
that the fears are get, get down, the Shields go down for a
while because we are having fun together, moving and talking and
all of those. Items that come from the secret
sauce come outside and they they speak it themselves.
They say, OK, I love this and I shift the room in this way.
Yeah, it's beautiful and it's a very natural nourishing process.
I like that a lot. I'm thinking it would be
valuable probably to everyone, right?
Regardless if you're male or female.
But The thing is probably within this text space, and I mean that
also comes back to what you said you were not just very early on
in age, but also you were one of the only one of the few women,
right? One of the two, basically.
And then for you to get feedback to the only other woman that was
there, like that was the only option basically.
And it has a lot to do with the space that we're in, which I
think is a shame. But I do think being at like,
understanding what your value is, your secret sauce, as well
as kind of embodying what you think is powerful, because that
is also where comfort is. I think it's valuable to
everyone because then everyone can be kind of their best self
in what they're doing. I love it.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more.
And that's why, although one to one, I tend to work with women,
I absolutely love when I have mixed groups in the corporate
realm because I recognize what you're saying.
We all independently of gender, we all benefit from knowing and
anchoring down our own self worth and our value.
That's, I would say, one of the most important things in our
lives. I I'm wondering why it is that
just when we go into kind of this corporate space and the
corporate role for me is always it's interesting, right?
An organization is just an amalgamation of people and they
come together with a certain goal and then processes are
around that to streamline the process.
And sometimes people don't really know what their role is
in kind of a as a cog in this machine, yet that's where it
comes out, right? How can you be authentically
yourself? And that's also what people find
challenging, probably because they come into an organization,
things are already in place. There's a culture, so it's
easier to kind of uphold. Their culture and their way of
working instead of being like, no, these are my values.
This is what I stand for and this is what I bring.
I think a lot of people need help with that, but I don't know
why that is. It's maybe like just the way we
organize ourselves in organizations or what is
perceived from the outside. That's a very good question.
I think human beings always have a tendency to we are social
creatures, right? So there's always a tendency to,
within the group compromise, right?
And I think that compromise becomes bigger and bigger, the
least awareness and the least self knowledge you have, right?
Because if you do, if you do already own that secret sauce
for yourself, and if you have daily practices that help you
continue reminding yourself of that, then even if you have a
company, of course, as you were saying, with its own culture and
with its own structure and let's say methods, etcetera, you can
always stay true to yourself as long as within within the the
freedom of the role, right. Because there's a way of doing
things and that's your way. It will always be your way.
Of course, in some cases the culture of the company might be
so far away from your personal values, then you realize you
need to make a different choice. That's also something that can
happen. But I think it's also due to a
lack of awareness. We, I think we don't spend
enough time being aware of what we are doing, with whom we are
doing and how we are doing. So we're really thinking about
our days. Yeah, consciously, yeah.
Yeah. And I was thinking about kind of
the education space, because I think you do have that kind of
as a kid. It's funny that one of the
exercises you have when it comes to the secret sauce is thinking
back to what you did when you were a child.
And then somehow, through your educational journey, you get a
lot of like theory about how the world works, about how math
works, linguistics, stuff like that.
History as well, science, physics.
All of them. I'm gonna name all of them.
And then somehow I think you'd lose kind of maybe what your
magic is. Or you conform to your
organization, whether that's in school and then at some point
into it in an organization. Funny enough, when you have your
own startup still, you have probably this mindset of this is
how it's supposed to go, so you'd lose it somewhere very,
very good. Yeah, If I look, I cannot say
for every education system, right?
But if I look at my own journey of education, it was less about
supporting me to discover myself and more about giving me the
knowledge, right. So I think the part where we
need to discover and become aware of ourselves, at least in
my case, it was completely ignored.
Yeah, I'm not there, right? It's inexistent.
Yeah. So unless you are surrounded by
people that are actively supporting you, ask those
questions and help you become aware it's never going to happen
until you potentially bump into a wall.
As I was bumping right and you realize something is wrong here,
I don't understand this friction.
Let's do something about it and then trying to understand it.
Yeah, I'm hoping with things like AI that personal education,
personalized education is going to become more prevalent and
then it can be more so because of a virtue of being
personalized. It doesn't have to be
streamlined and conforming, just education in general with a
bigger group. Which I think also lends itself
towards more one-on-one education.
Who are you and what are you most comfortable at?
Where can you still grow? And growth is by virtue in
uncomfortable space, but also attention to How do you feel and
are you at your right place? Or what even are your values?
And when would you feel? Right.
At your place. Yeah.
Just like a plant. I love what you're saying.
Where do you feel good, right? Does it align with your values?
Let's imagine we are all plants, Okay, right, For a while.
And Okay, I could be a cactus or I could be orchids, right?
We all need different things and we are thought that no, maybe we
need all the same and then we start feeling friction and our
leaves don't look so, so alive. Or maybe our flowers are not
opening up and then we think, OK, why is that happening?
Maybe we are not giving ourselves the kind of
nourishment that we need and we are just giving ourselves the
nourishment that we were, thoughts everyone else needs.
Yeah, but we are not cactus or cacti and orchids.
We are roses and I don't know, daisies, whatever.
Yeah, you know what I mean. I know what you mean, I thought.
Where are you going with this plant?
In the magic it's going. Yeah, but if if everyone gets
the same sunlight, everyone gets the same water, then yeah,
depending on the type of plant you are, you flourish or you do
not because you require more of one or the other.
Yeah, or the soil, right? Exactly.
And the amount, yeah. And only you can decide that and
then take responsibility for that.
But I don't think we are thought to do that.
No. Yeah, something they were saying
I want to to jump into that because I find it very
interesting. You were talking about
personalized education more and more, one to one.
That puzzles me, you know, because if I look back and me
particularly, the most self or the strongest learnings that I
got in my personal journey were actually in the interaction with
others. But then it's the interaction
with others conscious, right? Coming back home and thinking
what just happened? Let's journal a little bit about
it. Let's journal a little bit about
it and let's try to understand what happened.
Yeah. So if I imagine myself being
thought without the school system where I'm interacting
with my colleagues and with teachers, I think a lot of that
value would have been lost. That's true, right?
I wouldn't. If I didn't have my brothers, I
wouldn't have practiced something that makes me feel
alive. Right.
Which is guiding a group and teaching them.
I would be teaching being thought only by a computer.
I wouldn't have had that interaction.
So I don't have an answer, but I wanted to make a comment on that
because I'm afraid that that for me that wouldn't have worked.
Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, you mentioned it.
I before as well, humans are social animals basically.
Without the social component, things would be missing.
But yeah, I do like if I take my personal journey as kind of an
experience, I would be done with math, for example, and I would
struggle with linguistics, So and I didn't like reading.
So struggling with linguistics while not liking to read, that's
hard. That's a hard combination of
course. But with math I would be done
and then I would have to read a book.
Kind of. Yeah, against my liking.
And I would, I would still finish it.
Yeah, exactly. But then because sometimes I was
done earlier than the rest of my class, I would have like, time
to play. And it's not to take away from
that. I really enjoyed that, like
playing with clay and doing puzzles and stuff like that.
But yeah, I wouldn't be as efficient or effective.
And even by virtue of, for example, the grades that you
have defined, kind of a career path that you have.
It's very prevalent in in the Netherlands.
Sometimes I explain it. And people think this is an odd
kind of sense of education. Yeah, for me it was insane.
I learned about it. Wow, I've heard that as well.
Yeah. But even in high school, for
example, I was really good at English because I I learned that
from a young age. And there was this program which
they called Cambridge English, where some courses would be
extra English, more advanced English, and I wanted to do
that. Yet I didn't have the other
grades. For example, my Dutch wasn't as
great, my math was still good, but some other grades weren't as
good. So my average was below kind of
that barrier of entry. So I could never do that.
If I were to have done that, then probably my path would have
been different. Maybe I would have had a bit
more of a British accent, for example.
But yeah, I could never do that just because of my other kind of
courses averaging up to below average in that way.
Yeah. Yeah.
In that sense, yeah, I recognize that maybe that's putting a
boundary to really a lot of people that have a lot of
potential way too early. Yeah.
And And if I look at myself, great value that I was bringing
afterwards in the corporate world, right?
Those were not the skills I learned in aerospace engineering
by the way. I knew how to do the math but I
was leading teams. I so basically, of course it was
fundamental to speak the technology, right and to lead
technology. One needs to understand
technology. But the soft skills, even if I
look at my university years, those those were not really
fostered during university. They they were fostered because
of my interaction with people, other projects that I put.
I was spitting myself to, right? Yeah.
And of course, my experience with my siblings.
I'm so grateful. Yeah, I I really get that.
Yeah, it's like a very big school.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's especially since I have a
few. I get those interactions.
One of the things I was thinking of was at some point you, you
made this decision to do what you're doing now at a full time
basis. But I always like learning from
those experiences because I always, I also envision myself
at some point doing something and starting something of my
own. Let's celebrate that.
But I haven't done it yet. So I when I have the opportunity
of conversations like this, I really like to learn from that
because at some point you made you took the plunge.
Do you talk to me and lead up to that point where you did take
the plunge in any of the considerations there?
Yeah, thank you for that question.
It's a plunge. I think it's really just being
an entrepreneur. I love the description that my
business coach called. She's Lauren Messiah.
I absolutely love her. She gave this following image.
Being an entrepreneur is being in a darkness while you are
trying to build your own flashlight and you don't know
where where the way is, but you're building our flashlight
in the dark in the hopes that you will find out.
So that's how it feels. Yeah, it was, it was scary.
It was exciting, exciting at the same time, right?
I I'll be very honest, I think I avoided it for way too long,
right? I was already getting really
great results with the woman I was working with during my free
time right after work. I was working with women already
and on the weekends and my everything in me was telling me
that was the direction I was getting much more excitement and
energy from doing that work and I was getting less and less
excitement and. That's how it goes, yeah, until
the point that I'm actually feeling drained.
It's like my body is telling me you are just not being authentic
right now by staying in this place.
So I had to look, really be honest with myself and and say
am I staying? Because my heart is in here and
I believe that I'm really aligned with what I'm built to
do. Or am I staying out of fear?
Out of fear. Because it's comfortable, right?
I have a constant paycheck. I'm building, I'm growing in the
career. I continue being promoted.
I actually left just before I was getting another promotion.
So is it fear or is it out of love?
It was out of fear. And where where is my love?
My love is in this is in working with people this way.
So I said myself, OK, clear. When I grow old, I will always
regret it if I don't do it. So let's have a conversation
with my husband. Let's get a plan and just pull
the plug. And I jumped.
OK, scared. But I recognize that one of the
most important things for me was to surround myself with people
that had done it successfully. And we're doing it successfully.
Because I think the most important thing for someone
giving that jump is to give birth to the new version of
themselves that needs to be there.
Coming back to what you were saying, a previous version of
myself, right? I had to give birth of a new
version of myself that was Francisca the entrepreneur, not
Francisca the corporate right. And and that version was born
out of those interactions with my business coach, Lauren
Messiah with the Style Boss Academy group and my I have
friendships of other entrepreneurs in styling that,
that I I speak to every week. I absolutely.
We really support each other in that journey and was fundamental
for me to give birth to myself. Right.
A new version of myself, yeah. But I don't know if I answered
your question. No, I I think so.
I I'm interested in more so also the network part because you
already surrounded yourself. You said one of one of my kind
of key metrics to success was to surround myself with people that
are also doing it. You could learn from them, yeah,
and that makes a lot of sense. That's just the reason why I
asked this question is because I'm interested in that and you
want to learn from others to prevent as many mistakes, even
though you can't prevent all of them.
You won't make mistakes. Exactly.
You'll probably even make the same mistakes, But still to
learn from and to educate yourself.
So that plunge is less of a plunge, even though it's still a
plunge at the end. Yeah.
How did you like? Because I also said I'm bad at
networking. How do you network?
How do you make those connections?
Or what was even your first step into connecting with these
people? Yeah, I think if you use the
word networking, we all are awful at networking.
It's an awful work. Let's be honest, words, let's be
honest, right? It puts a lot of pressure on
human interaction, right? So I don't like to think about
it as networking, although it is in the end.
But I think about it as making acquaintances and getting to
know people. OK, So and that's something that
my, again, I learned from interacting with people.
So I one of my business, my business coach, actually gave me
that feedback. It's interesting because you
don't network, you get to know people.
It's very, that's what I do. I have twofold energy.
Usually I say I'm a very creative, nerdy person.
You can imagine where I'm behind the scenes cooking and creating.
And then when I get excited about something, I want to go
into the world and teach or interact with people and get
excited and I just make use of that excitement and curiosity
for people. And I I ask about them.
And I'm very grateful that those interactions that I come into
openly lead me to the things that I, I end up needing, right?
Or. Or people come to me one or two
years afterwards, hey, you're doing this now or I actually
need in my company something for that.
But those who were interactions that I stepped into without any
intention of doing business with, sometimes it was about
getting to know you. I'm genuinely interested in what
you're doing. They actually, sometimes, most
of the times also show interest, right?
The other way around. It's a balanced interaction.
And then I'm surprised many times because people come back
sometimes. So I'm, I have the same as you
were saying previously, I'm not that good at maintaining the
network right then going back to.
But whenever I I meet people, I'm genuinely interested and I
give it my own. So yeah, I try to be authentic.
That's the most important. Good.
Yeah, investing in those relationships, I think that's
the that's the way I should look at it as well.
It's just something about this online thing and then texting.
Maybe. I just might dislike for texting
in general is a is a hard one. Yeah, yeah, I can read.
You cannot read people's. Faces.
No, no. It's like, yeah, I miss so much
context. I I like conversations.
I like calling people. I'm still a caller, even though
those that crew might be dying out sometimes, but oh, I hope it
never. Dies.
Please, Yeah. Yeah, but just just to step back
and to talk about the journey that you took and to play
devil's advocate as well. Things are going to go well, but
things are also not going to go well.
Is there any, like, downsides or any setbacks you can share?
Yeah. OK.
I love that question. Yeah.
Oh, the first thing was for me to be in a mindset of abundance
instead of scarcity. And I think that's very
important for anyone, especially for an entrepreneur is I cannot
predict, right. When you're in a corporate
world, you predict when your next paid paycheck is coming in.
You know it every month. When you're an an entrepreneur,
there's a lot of fluctuation. There's their seasonality, which
you start predicting after a few years, you see how your
seasonality is. They are a little bit slower
times and a little bit more abundant times.
So just creating a mindset and fostering a mindset of abundance
that you know it's coming, even if right now it's a little bit
quiet And being OK in that space, feeling safe in that
space is very important. And that was my first challenge.
Thankfully. Now I have my practice of
abundance and I feel abundant. I'm very grateful for that.
But that was my first. In that sense, transformation
into the skin of an entrepreneur was to be OK with uncertainty
from a financial point of view. So being in a state of
abundance, I have enough right now.
Why am I worried, right? And knowing that it's always
coming, Then the second thing was again connected to
uncertainty. I don't have all the answers all
the time and sometimes I'm making a business, business
decision without having all the information, without having the
product completely ready, right. But that was a completely
different shift from corporate. Whenever I was selling a product
I would sell it already ready, it's, it's ready to take off the
shelves. Now I'm selling a proposition
and and I just trust it fully because I know I have everything
that it takes to build it and Co create it and then just show up
as my total best. And I know it's OK.
It's it's going to happen. So also getting naked of the
perfectionist, right? That's also an old voice of
mine. I know it's over there on the
background, right? Most many of us have that that
little voice. So when the perfectionist steps
in, I say it's OK, it's OK You can sit down for a while, see
see how beautiful it is and how grateful I am from for what it
already is. It doesn't need to be perfect.
It's already beautiful. Yeah, I like that a lot.
It's a lot of mindset work. Yeah, I've heard the abundance
versus scarcity, and it's more so because I listen to a lot of
podcasts and a lot of comedians on podcasts and they said, well,
if you look back 20 years, 30 years, the comedy scene wasn't
as great. So any gig, any opportunity that
people would get? They would fight for that,
right? This is mine and it would not
be. You would not give it to anyone
else because it's scarce. Yeah, exactly.
But now they're in a space where there's plenty of opportunity,
right? Whether it's on TV, whether it's
online, whether it's in person, there's an abundance of
opportunity. So people give it to each other.
They're like they, they would like their federal network,
their federal relationships to also have what they have or to
have more than what they have because there's enough to go
around. Exactly.
I think that's a really good mindset to have as well within
kind of your own space and your own entrepreneurial network.
I love that example you just gave.
And and it's really a good example because it shows that
abundance creates abundance, an abundance mindset creates
abundance around you and for other people too.
So I I also love my network because for instance this this
week I'm going to meet with one of my.
Fellow stylists, because I get an A great opportunity.
She doesn't fit properly my normal client and I just thought
immediately of her. It fits her client perfectly.
If I was in a scarcity mindset, I would say no.
I will find out it's mine and I would most likely end up working
with a person that doesn't fit 100% what I usually do.
Both of us would not be fully satisfied.
And and I would be like, right, So it wouldn't be good for
anyone. On the other hand, because I
feel abundant, I'm in an abundance mindset.
I'm saying, OK, this woman is perfect for this friend of mine,
let's couple them together. This is for their highest good.
An Indian for my highest good as well because I'm opening space
for the ones that are fully aligned.
Yeah, yeah there was a probably a learning in there as well
because at some point you were like no, this needs to be a
match or you were trying to force it to be a match, but not
everything can be a match. What were some of the cases also
to learn from that it wasn't a match?
Oh, good question. It came already for my coverage
years, you know, because there was a lot of time.
There were a lot of times where I was doing things because I was
good at them, not because they were a match, you know what I
mean? And you feel it in your body
when that's happening because you don't get excited about it.
And you you you get out of the activity with less energy than
what you entered. And I remember that happening in
specific projects that I did, and I said yes during my
corporate years because I was in a scarcity mindset, I thought I
hatched. I have to please all of these
people all the time because otherwise the shoe is going to
drop. Yes, I have to.
Yeah, exactly. I have to.
And nowadays, and that's not the case, I am my own authority.
I'm a sovereign being. I can Co create my own reality,
how beautiful that is, right? So I might as well make use of
that. Exactly one of the final
questions I had just because you gave so many shout outs to your
business coach, how, how is it having a business coach?
Because I I've never had that. How was that relationship?
Oh, of course. It really depends on the person.
Yeah. I am so grateful to have found
my business coach. It was at the precisely the
point where I was feeling that I had to do the jump.
So I usually feel that it was guided.
You know, it was something. Yeah, exactly.
Indeed it was guided and for me it works.
Amazingly well. Again, it really depends on the
energies of the people. You really need someone that is
a good match. And I always say I also had not
so good experiences in the past, not for business coaching but
for other things. And that when that happened, it
was because the person didn't go through it right and they are
trying to teach something that they did not embody.
The most important thing is that someone who embodies what they
preach 100 a 1000%. But in this particular case, I'm
so grateful for Lauren. Shout out for Lauren out there
if you're watching Lauren Messiah, because number one, she
has an immense amount of experience and she did it.
Continues doing it successfully, right?
She has the proof. And second thing she reads
energy and people like no other. So I arrive usually our meetings
ago something like this. I arrive with a bunch of plans
and dreams that I want to achieve and I want to meet these
people and I want to do this and I'm excited about working with
that person And she just, she helps me take a step back and
see things from just for asking a few questions right and giving
a few experience of her. Giving a more wider lens
perspective that expands me. You know, I entered with this
perspective thinking excited because I was going to achieve
this and she just breaks that apart and suddenly I'm excited
because I can achieve this. Wow, right?
It's amazing without forcing it. Without I take the initiative
and then she expands me. It's amazing just by asking
questions and giving her own perspective and experience.
And of course, everything needs to be felt in my own gut.
I'm a very, I call it splenic person, a very embodied, like an
animal, a little bit. I feel everything in my guts,
very intuitive. So I only follow.
Now, it wasn't always like that, but I always only follow.
I had to learn. I only follow what feels aligned
and ready at the time that it feels.
But usually I come out of those meetings like super excited,
like a kid after Christmas, you know, because.
Wow, I didn't. I never thought I could do that
then. Now I believe I can do that.
I'm gonna get it. Yeah.
Yeah, I'm gonna get it. Is she still your business
coach? Yeah, I'm so grateful.
That's fantastic. She still is.
And I hope, I believe she will continue for a long time.
Yeah. I mean, it circles back to what
we said before that if you don't have any interactions with
anyone, if you would have that with the screen, it would not be
as empowering, enlightening, motivational as you're having it
to be now. Yeah, I think that's really
cool. Absolutely.
I've I've loved this conversation.
Francesca, this. Was a lot of fun.
Me too. Thank you so much for the
invitation. Thank you as well in in kind of
the topics we discussed as well as your journey.
Is there anything missing that you still would like to add on?
Just to round everything up, remember that you have so much
power, all of you within you. And that it's all about
believing. First of all, seeing it,
recognizing it, believing in it. And then embodying it, showing
it to the world. Because in the end, we are
embodied human beings. I'm in front of you, right?
We see each other, we smile. So what does that mean for you
to embody your secret sauce every single day, right?
What does that mean? Bring it out.
Believe it in yourself. And then just have fun like we
were having in this conversation.
Have fun. Life is way too serious.
That's a great point. Yeah, I love to laugh and I
think it it makes other people laugh. 1000%, Yeah.
Good. Then I'm gonna round it off
here. Thank you so much for listening.
I'm gonna put all Francesca's socials in the description
below, reach out to her and let her know you came from our
episode. And with that being said, thank
you for listening again. We'll see you in the next one.