A Re-Introduction To Your Host, La Jefa, Kita Zuleta Part 1

What if you could redefine entrepreneurship by embracing a life of balance and authenticity? Join me, Kita Zuleta, as I share my unique journey in this heartfelt episode of Cafecito con Jefas. Growing up as the youngest daughter in a strict immigrant family, I navigated the challenges of ADHD, dyslexia, and societal expectations, all while pursuing my passion for music and later, a multifaceted career. Hear how my upbringing in a religious household and the pressures to follow a traditional path shaped my early life, and how I ultimately found my way to a fulfilling career as a brand strategist, jefa coach, photographer, and podcaster.

Venture with me through my early entrepreneurial days at Cutco Cutlery, where I thrived as a sales rep and later as a lead recruiter. My time at Cutco was more than just about sales; it cultivated my leadership skills and ignited my love for community building. Learn about the pivotal moments and health challenges, including a fibromyalgia diagnosis at 24, that caused me to reassess my life and career trajectory. These experiences not only informed my professional path but also underscored the importance of holistic entrepreneurship and the need to step away from relentless hustle culture.

In this episode, I also delve into my current endeavors, focusing on my mission to create culturally resonant stock images for Latinas and foster a supportive community through Cafecito con Jefas. Discover how my personal health journey and entrepreneurial spirit have driven me to champion a balanced approach to life and business, encouraging others to do the same. Join me for an inspiring and honest conversation about resilience, passion, and the pursuit of a meaningful, balanced life.

Transcript

Jefa Life

Speaker 1 0:00

Hi, jefas, welcome back to the Cabecito con Jefas podcast. I'm your host, kita Zuleta, a brand strategist, jefa coach and photographer from LA. It's season two and, whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, this season is packed with powerful conversations, actionable strategies and the realness that Cabecito con Jefas is known for. My jefa journey has been anything but linear. I've pursued entrepreneurship in many forms over the past 15 years and I'm excited to share my knowledge and use my podcast to host conversations about real life and entrepreneurship, aka Jefa Life. While our paths may vary, the emotions and experiences we share unite us. We're all the same, same but different. So grab a favorite mug, pour yourself a cafecito and get cozy, because these conversations will ignite your passion, spark creativity, elevate your thinking and fuel your determination. I see you, jefa. Keep going. Welcome to the Cafecito con Jefas podcast. Hi Jefas, welcome back to the Cafecito con Jefas podcast. I'm your host, kita Zuleta. In today's episode, it is an official reintroduction to yours truly, so allow me to introduce myself. I am Kita Zuleta, a brand strategist, jefa coach, photographer and podcaster here in Los Angeles, down east, specifically for my SoCal, jefas. I teach Jefas how to grow their brand's online presence at a pace that aligns with their current season in their jefa journey and teach them to prioritize monetizing their business with simple strategies and intentional images to show up online. I am a proud first-gen Mexi Salvi jefa, daughter of immigrants born and raised here in Los Angeles. Shout out to the hood, lynn Wood. I am a cafecito lover. I am a neurodivergent nerd. I was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, I want to say three years ago. Now I am a proud Plantitas mom. I have, I want to say, over maybe 20 Plantitas just in my office jungle alone. I'm a fibromyalgia fighter and a wife to my best friend and business partner, johnny Baru. We are on pace to hit 11 years of marriage in December, so December of 2024. I wanted to share my knowledge and use this podcast to host conversations about real life and entrepreneurship, or, as I like to say, jefa life.

Speaker 1 2:33

As a brand photographer, my favorite form of photography is creating images for my fellow jefas and telling parts of their story through my lens and creating imagery that serves as marketing materials to grow their brand's online presence. I deeply believe that we deserve to take up space, serve quality imagery to promote our businesses, and I'll be sharing a bit more about how I got to this point in my photography journey in a bit. As a Latina photographer, I dream of creating an accessible stock image library that celebrates our skin tones and cultura. I've been pursuing entrepreneurship for over 15 years now, and at least the last 12-ish since social media really started and I started trying to pursue showing up online. A big thing, of course, was Instagram. That's kind of been the platform that I've grown up on since I started my entrepreneurial journey, and one of the things that I noticed was the stock images that were available to utilize when I didn't have the image that even I created as a photographer to show up to host conversations that weren't only hey, look, this is what I did, or this is the exact image I created. I would want to lean on stock imagery that was out there to be able to keep promoting my business, but the stock images or felt like me dreaming about creating a stock image library that reflects our skin tones and cultura was always skin tones that didn't look like my own, and as Latinas, we look and sound very different and even just in our skin tones we have a wide range of needs, so my goal is to be able to create that, and I believe that one day I will get to create that, and I have quite a library now of stock imagery through what I've created with the fellow jefas that I've worked with, but it hasn't been with a purpose to provide it accessibly externally for the community. So I'm working to build on that and it's a big goal for myself to be able to bring that to the community in the upcoming year. So I'm really looking forward to that.

Speaker 1 5:10

And then my title as founder of Cafecito con Jefas. I got to share about Cafecito con Jefas and where we're at now and how far we've come in our first episode. We're at now and how far we've come in our first episode. But DJ is a community and podcast designed to alleviate the loneliness that comes with being an entrepreneur and close the knowledge gap by teaching half us how to show up online, as most of us are online business owners. It's also a space where we want to cultivate a culture of connection and live in pursuit of holistic entrepreneurship, and what I mean by that is taking care of ourselves alongside our business.

Speaker 1 5:54

Growing up as an entrepreneur, I pursued and learned from a lot of online mentors, and especially when I was first coming up, and I know it's still prominent now that hustle culture, but maybe between the community I've started and, being in the communities I'm purposefully placing myself in, I'm doing my best to remove myself from that hustle culture, although it's deeply ingrained in me. But it was that constant, nonstop just overworking ourselves in order to prove ourselves or to get to the standard, just to stay busy. It was this thing where rest was not celebrated and so burnt out a number of times throughout my journey. And so what I want to cultivate inside of CCJ and teach and have us to continue to help one another really grasp is looking at our business and our life.

Speaker 1 7:01

You know this hefa life that I talk about because we are business owners, so we get to live our life. You know this HEPA life that I talk about because we are business owners, so we get to live our life accordingly. We get to determine when we work, when we clock in, when we sleep, you know, and of course there's a lot of HEPAs that have their families and have their kids, and you know there's all different kinds of roles to manage and different roles we each play. But once you put those blocks of core values and core responsibilities, if you will, that we're going to take care of and the constants moving around, that we get to decide how we manage our time and energy and our business and so manage our time and energy and our business. And so I truly believe that we get to look at our business holistically, get to look at our life entirely, and, as someone who struggles with both what would be considered learning disabilities and physical disabilities and physical disabilities I have had to learn to manage my life and slow the pace down and really take ownership of who I am and what my body and my brain needs in order to be able to serve my clients well. And so I think that I really really am passionate about encouraging us as a community, to look at our lives holistically. You know, not just our health, of course, all the different levels of health, but, yes, that needs to be taken care of first and we need to be okay in order to be able to handle all of our business things. So that's what I mean when I say pursuing holistic entrepreneurship is really out our plan for the current season that we're in and taking into account all of our roles and our capacity and you know I can go on specifically just on that but the pursuit of holistic entrepreneurship is so key for how I move these days and how I hope to practice living my life and managing my business, but it's certainly what I want to encourage us as a community to pursue as well. And then, finally, the CCGA and this podcast is providing a platform for us to share our stories so important to me to be able to uplift our stories, especially as HEPAS.

Speaker 1 9:35

There's a lot of conversations that are out there and not highlighted as much and I feel like for myself Not highlighted as much and I feel like for myself, so many of the spaces and online mentors and people that I was wanting to learn from and seek from. The conversations were mostly strategic and educational and, you know, bringing in fellow entrepreneurs to teach and although, yes, I mean we absolutely need those education spaces and I've learned so much from conversations. I find that enjoy hosting conversations that are real life and entrepreneurship and like how did we get here? And let's talk about the back end thing, the behind the scenes part, you know, and the journey that has gotten us to this point, and there's so much wisdom to be gained and trust. If you were to listen to season one and so many of the episodes that we have there. I mean, each of your fellow HEPas that come through are experts in their field and so they are still teaching throughout these conversations.

Speaker 1 10:54

But it's much less of an agenda where it's like, well come and you know, essentially have a workshop on a podcast. It's let's have these conversations, let's have these conversations and the wisdom just happens to flow out of the conversation. But it's much more talking about our stories beyond the outward facing. This is what I do for work, and I believe that we can go farther together and by learning from one another. By hearing each other's stories, we can be encouraged to be able to say, oh man, if she can do it, then I can do it, and oh, I've cool. I'm not the only one going through this, or I'm not the only one that is feeling this way behind the scenes Imposter syndrome, or, you know, struggling with my mental health, or also struggling with a physical disability, or, you know, worrying about managing my time, like all of those things.

Speaker 1 11:46

I believe that it's so important for us to have these conversations and to not always look so put together, because that's again outward facing. Of course we don't want to look, not put together for our clients and, of course, we want to serve at our best. But life is messy and we are imperfect beings in an imperfect world, and, you know, seeking and waiting for perfection to come around or striving for it there is. You know, the striving for excellence that is, I believe, so important, and having high standards for ourselves and not wanting to be mediocre those are all fantastic things and wanting to be at a high level and a good standard of things. But perfection is not something that we can attain, punto. I don't care who you are, we can't attain perfection. It doesn't exist, and even still, it would have different definitions for each person. So, therefore, there is no true perfection, and so, for that, if we embrace the fact that we will always fall short to someone else's measuring stick, then let's just figure out what it is that we are seeking, what is our vision, what is our dream, what is our goal, what is it that we are looking to pursue? And go for that and do as much as we can, as best as we can, as often as we can, and that we are putting our best foot forward, pasito, a pasito, and just being able to go towards that.

Speaker 1 13:11

And now we're in season two of the podcast, and one of the phrases I added in the outros of the episodes is not only is there no rush to our jefa journey, but there's no finish line. Y'all Like we might have, you know, versions of milestones that we want to hit, but then le tenemos que seguir, like we got to keep going and even as we level up. We're leveling up to the next level, but there are more levels after that. So, knowing that this is a marathon, not a sprint, and we get to take care of ourselves in our pursuit of our vision, our dream, and so all of that, to say that my title as founder of Cabec con Jefa, that is the mission, that's the heart behind this community and why I say the words that I say in the mission statement or how I introduce myself or in my bios, that is what it means for me to want to encourage us to pursue holistic entrepreneurship and to provide this platform to share our stories and to cultivate connection, because man do, we need one another y'all and this space, this community that now exists. I didn't have this coming up as an entrepreneur, so I'm so proud of it now. Coming up as an entrepreneur, so I'm so proud of it now and I'm so grateful to receive comments from fellow HEPAs saying how it's impacted them in their journey and how, even if they were a part of the community for a while and you know, they gain energy to go fly and it takes them a while to either come back and visit or, you know, hang out, or maybe they're no longer actively a part of the community. But it's cool to be able to watch how there is impact. And it's not about me, it's about us coming together and how we can impact each other. And that's the purpose of this community is for us to connect with one another. That is myself as the founder of CCJ and where that heart comes from. But I do want to kind of dive in a little deeper and give y'all like a glimpse into my HEPA journey, you know, and kind of explain what exactly I'm talking about when I say I've been pursuing entrepreneurship in many forms over the last 15 years. If you've gone to my master class, um have even slides that show baby kita as baby entrepreneur and just getting started back in 2008. Like, honestly, that's when I got I mean truly, if we get real technical with it I started pursuing entrepreneurship in forms of babysitting, right, like in 2005, like right out of high school, and I was a tutor and got, like you know, different little side gigs, if you will, right, and my pursuit of entrepreneurship in general, or my desire to do my own thing.

Speaker 1 16:36

Daughter of immigrants, I'm the youngest of girls and, um, the map or the plan for my life was, you know, be a good girl, right. Like I was raised in the church. My father was a pastor and a missionary and so, being the youngest of seven, I want to be a pastor. But you can say my dad was anything but a pastor at a church. He was in every leadership role with numbers, so he was constantly an accountant, always on the board, always in leadership, and growing up, was always a teacher. My dad's an amazing teacher and I believe I get that from him, and also my grandfather was always someone that told us to be servant leaders and give and put others first Worked his butt off the hood when I was 15.

Speaker 1 17:38

We first moved to Downey and that was before the hood moved to Downey. If you go to Downey now, you hear parties and you have parties on the street all the time, but back then it was real quiet and it was real pale. I remember I was 15. It was right before I was supposed to have a quinceanera and I was so sad that I was moving away from my friends and I wanted to go to Linwood High. Oh, I was going to be a chola, you know what I mean. Like I did it all the lip liner I, you know. Según joined a tragging crew Like nah, yeah, I was really grateful to be spared from the hood.

Speaker 1 18:18

Real hard to get us out and keep us in an environment free from that, keep us in an environment away from that. Being in the positions he was always in, at church and at work. He was always a leader and so always encouraged. And I say we because my sisters and I, but especially and specifically my sister, who is only a year and a half older than me, the two of us were always together, you can imagine. And so we were always told to be examples and portate bien and you know all of these things right.

Speaker 1 18:50

And my sister, you can imagine niña obediente, right, like doing whatever she needs to do. She's an amazing person. I love her. But niña obediente, she would do things she was supposed to do and I always had extra wiggles, like now I know, because a few years ago I was diagnosed with ADHD but coming up I was just the disobedient child or the problem child or you know, just couldn't do what I was supposed to do. And, um, you know, doing little things like you know, bringing my little laser pointer, cause I was so excited to show my friends, um, but I wasn't supposed to write or bring my beanie baby and things like that that inherently weren't bad things I was doing, but I was disobeying, I wasn't supposed to bring them with me, so things like that. I was just always a version of problematic right. And so back to the formula that was taught to myself, and I've heard that a lot of us, as first gen, had this same formula taught to us, especially as women. You know, you be a good girl, you go to school and graduate high school, you go to college and then you get married and then you become a mom and then your life is fulfilled. That's it, like there's no future plans. That holds to me.

Speaker 1 20:13

I've always been really smart. I've been able to learn things quickly and had different areas of strengths. Reading was not one of them, now that I know it was dyslexia. You know, reading was always difficult for me, and ideas wasn't an issue, but writing them down on a page was what was hard, and dyslexia, right like, had that struggle. There were certain areas of school that I would struggle with. I'd get bored with homework because I'm like, I already learned this in school. I already passed, you know, the little quiz at school. Why the heck am I going to do this again for hours at home? But anyways, I digress. The point is that I graduated high school with honors and I went to college, and so that was, quite frankly, my biggest culture shock was moving to Orange County. I went to Vanguard University and Vanguard pursuing the music department. I have been singing my entire life choir, officially in school, I want to say, since fourth grade.

Speaker 1 21:19

When it came to like what I wanted to pursue in school, you know, I would weigh out the options that I was aware of. You know I would be told, like, be a lawyer because you're really good at, you know, proving your points and debating. But obviously lawyering was a lot of school and a ton of reading, so not my strong suit, um. And then I was told, you know, to be a doctor. I kind of wanted to be a nurse, you know and, um, because I loved, I loved anatomy. I love like to learn how things work. So, um, science was something that I now know. I was more interested in, but I didn't understand understand which one at the time, or how to describe that, or what to pursue outside of being a nurse or being a doctor. You know, doctor, lawyer was the kind of careers that my parents would mention.

Speaker 1 22:19

But not only was it the tons of schooling that I was like unattracted to, I always had this feeling of, well, if I'm going to work so hard towards a career to then drop it the second. I become a mom, because the dream was always to be a full-time mom, right, like that was the end goal, right. And so I never saw, like what was the point to do all of that schooling towards anything really and then build a career that I'm gonna walk away from. And I had seen it happen with a few of my cousins. Like I had a cousin that was about to, like she had, I think she had just passed the bar and was going into her law career. Boom, she got married, she had her kid and no more career. And for me I was like what's the point? Not just the work, but the debt, like why? So I really struggled with figuring out, like, what I was going to do with my life, because for me it was always be a mom, like that was the goal. And so I always thought, like, well, I need to figure out how I can do something to support my family or to help know my future husband in my own way. So I almost always pictured a version of a side hustle, but I didn't know what that was going to look like or any of those things. It was always, you know, just mom.

Speaker 1 23:48

And so then, when it came to what I was going to pursue at school, and I look at the subjects that I did well in high school, I mean I got straight A's in choir all the time. I loved it, I loved singing and I love the music department and I don't know about y'all if y'all have seen Sister Act, sister Act 2 specifically. I wanted to be Whippy Goldberg. I was like you know what I can teach music and I absolutely adored my choir teacher for, uh, from sixth grade to 11th grade and sorry I'm getting teared up because we lost him a couple years ago, but Mr Brand was an incredible music teacher and taught me so much of what I know fundamentally, um, and I I loved it, and so I was like you know what? I can be a choir teacher and I can, um, teach music and it's something I know, I'm strong with, I'm really good with kids. I was, you know, always a babysitter, always teaching, you know, and mentoring young kids, and so I was like that that's what I can do.

Speaker 1 25:00

So I went to Vanguard University with a goal to pursue music education. And I went to Vanguard because they had one of the best music education schools that I had at least researched at the time. And I had some friends that had gone to Vanguard and, um, their concert choir was phenomenal. So I was like there, that's where I want to go. Then it's by the beach. I mean, come on, what? Why wouldn't I want to go? Um, so I ended up going to Vanguard university. Um, loved being a part of their concert choir. It was so even competitive in the sense of how much, how hard we would practice. I mean we would practice singing like an elite athlete practices their sport, like there was no messing around, it wasn't just for funsies, it was for real.

Speaker 1 25:58

Tanto que, my freshman year in college, I had the opportunity to go with my concert choir and sing at Carnegie Hall, which was an incredible experience. And because of the format of the concert, I got the opportunity to sing on stage and in the wings. So it's just like the fact that I can say I can, I've sang at Carnegie Hall. It's like badge of honor, nice fun fact, totally, totally great. But just like the saying that Carnegie Hall is known for, you know, like the road to Carnegie Hall is practice, practice, practice. You know, like the road to Carnegie Hall is practice, practice, practice. Like no joke y'all, we would be singing Christmas songs in August, preparing for our Christmas concert in December.

Speaker 1 26:43

So when I say this music education program was intense, it was intense tanto que it was actually a five-year program condensed into four years. So I went in already knowing that I wanted to pursue music education. So my counselor at the time packed my schedule with my music classes because it was a five-year, um, a five-year program condensed into four. So then I was taking I want to say like 10 or 11 classes for maybe like 13, 14 units. It was just like insane and the amount of practice and homework that needed to come through just the music classes alone was taking up so much time and energy. And, quite frankly, I hadn't noticed this pattern until my junior year, which is when I realized I was going so heavy into the music classes that I was not getting all of my what's called like gen eds like knocked out. So I wasn't taking like those freshman classes that everybody was taking alongside freshmen or alongside my peers.

Speaker 1 27:58

So I was my third year in at Vanguard pursuing music education and I was on pace with my music education classes but so far behind with all of my like regular classes. And at that point, you know, the scheduling was super complicated because I was now a junior in college and needing to take freshman classes. Like it was a mess. I was wrapping up my junior year, trying to go into my senior year and talking to my counselor like what do you mean? I'm not on pace to graduate, like I was still three years away from graduating. So that, of course, was hella disheartening. I wasn't quite sure how I was going to be doing that, because then that's just more money, more schooling, um, and again, like as smart as I was and capable of being able to do it, I struggled with getting all of my homework done or doing all of keeping up with all's the thing that I like to label of my entrepreneurship journey or pursuit of entrepreneurship, because the job with Vector Marketing was being a sales rep.

Speaker 1 29:25

You're technically a 1099, so you're an independent contractor, so you work for yourself, but you are selling this product which is Cutco Cutlery. And so I was one of those kids who sold knives not door to door, because we would make they were in-person sales back then but we would make appointments to go into strangers' homes and make a presentation. We would, quite literally, we had a script, we had our little visual aid, which at the time was a binder that you just flip through the pages and show the pictures and talk through and talk up this product that was Cutco. Now a previous Cutco rep had sold Cutco because it's an amazing product, had sold Cutco to my parents years before, so I had already been using Cutco in our home for, I want to say, at least four or five years. So I was very familiar with the product.

Speaker 1 30:25

And when I went in for the interview and realized it was a sales job and then realized that the product was Cutco, I was like, oh, I know that product, I use it every day at home. Like it's amazing you mean, I can make that much money if I sell that Done. Because when it comes to sales and it comes to who I am as a person, like I'm a terrible liar y'all. You can ask my husband, you can ask my parents. Like I am the worst liar you'll find. So if I don't believe in something, you'll find. So if I don't believe in something, I cannot sell it. Like no. So this was very easy, because I was really easy to get excited over a product I genuinely believed in and then, the more I learned about it, cool Sold myself on the job, myself on the product and then adding up how much money I could be making selling this product. Sign me up. I ended up selling over $35,000 in my first four months, which is my first summer.

Speaker 1 31:24

It was that summer in between my junior year and my senior year in college, and I got a taste of what what working on my terms could look like when what was laid out, the path that was about to be laid out for me was an additional three years of school Again with that. What's the point? Vibe, long term or the image I had in my head was OK, well, let me just teach some kids how to sing up until the day that I get married and I have kids, right Like. So, no matter what, I always felt like I was going to be walking away from whatever it was I was pursuing, and you know that was a combination of so many things and reasons for it, right, but it was where I was in my head where it just didn't make sense for me to continue to get into debt. I was already in a ton of debt.

Speaker 1 32:23

Now when I found a job that I was like I can do this and I can do this job, do it well. And at the end of my summer, mind you, I was at that time I want to say 21-ish, and for the reps in vector marketing, that was old. A lot of the reps that start selling Cutco are like right out of high school, just starting college, because it's the kind of job that you do as you are in college, like you just kind of put yourself through college. A lot of people just supplement their current income with it. But so I was older and I quickly was being watched by my manager and seeing how I would help my fellow sales reps and I would like, you know kind of teach them like this is how you can do it. And you know, one of the things that we would do is have like weekly team meetings, and so I would encourage my fellow reps and just be like, look, this is how we can do it. Look, blah, blah, blah, like siempre right.

Speaker 1 33:36

And so I started off in a small office in Costa Mesa. My manager quickly wanted to promote me to be an assistant manager and saw how good I was at teaching and so had me start practicing running interviews and recruiting. So then I became an assistant manager within four months of being there and started giving me, you know, those managerial duties and I felt so important Y'all was. I mean I legit was now in charge of the office for you know, half of the time, but again, it was a smaller office. And so, because I was successfully growing what was known to be a small office in Costa Mesa, I quickly was being noticed by the division manager in the Long Beach office. Being noticed by the division manager in the Long Beach office, which at the time was the biggest office and sales team in the country.

Speaker 1 34:45

I ended up not going back to school, or I don't even remember that timeline very well. I think maybe I started my senior year, but I ended up moving off campus and I was only doing part-time at that point and really I was only going on campus for choir or I think I dropped choir and then at that point I had absolutely no motivation to go back to school. So I ended up dropping out and just pursued this job full-time, especially because I was going into management. You know they needed me at the office and I felt so important. I was kicking butt at this job, um, and I was doing really well. I quickly became one of the top recruiters, um. I was great at interviewing and being able to filter through the people that were looking for this job. I was great at interviewing and being able to filter through the people that were looking for this job. I was instantly starting to get told. Within the year, I quickly went from just a sales rep to assistant manager to then, like, I got transferred to the Long Beach office. To then, like, in I got transferred to the Long Beach office and because there was multiple assistant managers there, I quickly became the like number two manager assistant. Um and uh became one of the lead recruiters in that office.

Speaker 1 36:10

Um, and once I started being one of the top recruiters, I started training in order to be able to train the sales reps and be able to continue to manage them, you know, post their launch at the beginning of their careers and teaching them how to manage their time. Because now these sales reps, they get to literally do as many appointments as possible based on their schedule. So then I'd sit down with each of the sales reps and say, okay, let's look at your time, and you know I'd tell them how many appointments would you want to do, cause you get paid per appointment or commission, right, whichever one is greater. Um, but you know they'd come to me and be like, oh well, I want to do like 20 appointments. And I was like, ok, cool, not a problem, I love your enthusiasm, let's see when you can get these 20 appointments in.

Speaker 1 37:05

So then I'd have a sheet of paper that had all these cells like the 168 hours that is the week, right. And so then I'd be like, all right, so tell me what your school schedule is, or what do you normally do every week, right? Like do you go to church, do you do X cosa, like do you take other classes or, you know, have specific things in your calendar that happen every week or consistently, that you just can't. You know, shift Like this is something that happens all the time. So then we'd go through having them tell me everything that they do and then, as I was telling them, okay, well, on average, you know, our appointments take about an hour. So if we cushion it for an hour and a half, cool. Then you know you think of drive time. We space it out this way, this way, okay, cool. Well, I know you can squeeze maybe six to eight appointments in here and we still have to put in, you know, your call time and all the different like things that need to happen. So then they're like, oh, okay, cool, so then we'd be able to like reset their expectations, reset their goals and be able, great, but six or eight is still a great number. So then let's see what we can do to get you there.

Speaker 1 38:23

And so it was a constant, you know, like managing each individual rep and then the team as a whole. So I ended up doing that in the Long Beach office. I was there for, I want to say, three years. I went from the different levels of assistance they have so many different levels there, people that focus on different things. But my final year I was the division office manager and so I was.

Speaker 1 38:53

You know, we had the, especially because I was in the largest office of the division. I was the. I was assistant only to the, the Second to the division manager, so it was technically his office, but I ran everything. So I took point on all of it. I managed my assistant manager team. I managed the recruiting, the training, the sales reps. So I was running this office for my manager as if it was my own, except I wasn't making that money, I was making it for someone else.

Speaker 1 39:39

And so I was working. I mean, I was in my prime right. So I thought I was it right Like just doing it. I was walking around in my suits, I was recruiting. I was it right Like just doing it. I was walking around in my suits, I was recruiting, I was running interviews, I was running training and teaching and you know, I grew the team, I believe, at most. At one time we had over 300 sales reps and that year we made it to 1.4 million in sales Like. So we were number one in the country and blah, blah, blah Like.

Speaker 1 40:13

There were so many accomplishments and accolades that were hit um during that season, um, by myself and my team, um, but it wasn't mine and it was for someone else. But it wasn't mine and it was for someone else. And although I was loving my team and loving what I did by watching my sales reps go from super intimidated to make a phone call because back then we weren't just on email or Instagram or trying to find things like we literally had to call these phone numbers of people that we were recommended to and call them throughout our days, like it was just calling their house phone and hoping that they pick up and hoping they give us a couple of, you know, minutes of their time to listen to our pitch, to set a time on their schedule for us to come over to their house. Like it wasn't the easiest job y'all, um, but once you got in, I mean, it was an easy product to sell because it's a great tool. So, anyways, um, the whole point is that I was working really hard.

Entrepreneurial Foundation and Health Journey

Speaker 1 41:26

At that point I want to say there were some days that I was proud to say I was working like 18 hour days, like at the office, because I would start there and end there and set up through all the things. So you can imagine I was not taking care of myself, I was taking. You know, y'all may think I drink a lot of coffee now, but at that point I was doing like triple shots, like it was that my drink was a triple shot, like white mocha, I think it was. So I'd have one of those in the morning, I'd have like a five-hour energy in the middle of the day, and then a whole nother coffee at night, like it was just a lot of coffee y'all, a lot of caffeine, just to push through. And I was young, I was what, my early 20s. So I was just going ham, not just on the caffeine but on the overworking, on the not sleeping, and then of course, the occasional, you know team bonding, as my manager would put it, with my fellow assistant managers. So then, you know, thursday, fridays, we'd go to bars and we'd have some drinks and then wake up at the crack of dawn to do it all over again, like so it was just non-stop, not healthy, not recommended and the opposite of the lifestyle I'm trying to create now.

Speaker 1 42:45

But the foundation that was, you know, teaching and encouraging my teammates, and also it was the beginning of where I started the personal development journey Right, like I mean you can imagine being amongst a lot of sales reps. Lot of sales reps, I mean it's a field that encourages you to really get motivated and get organized and teaching you how to sell. Man, there's so much that gets taught in a sales environment because it can be so hard to keep selling and to push in and through the no's and the hard moments, and so really there was so much that I learned in those years. I got flown out to the manufacturing headquarters for Cutco and like all kinds of stuff, but very much so was developed as this upcoming leader, um in the company and um in the end. There was just a summer where you know life happened also and some big things um were going on where I was, just like things were going on where I was, just like you know what I'm done.

Speaker 1 44:17

I burnt out and I needed to walk away from this job and it was really hard because I loved the work. I loved how good I felt with my team, watching them blossom into sales reps and being able to develop reps from sales reps to even management. Like there was just so many good things that came from what I learned and experienced in this portion of my career, in this job, because, in the end, I was a sales coach, basically, and and being able to be that sales, that performance coach, even because I would practice with them, of course, going back to my foundations of practice, practice, practice, um, so much of that. And we would have weekly team meetings because, again, my reps were on the field. So, um, they were only in office. You know people to get hired in the interview and they would come for training and then it's like fly you go and you are on the field.

Speaker 1 45:18

And so we would have weekly team meetings where we would encourage the reps to come to the office so that we can see each other, we can see each other and so that we can know that we're not alone, as alone as it is on the field. We can come together, we can celebrate the teammates wins, so, like if people made sales, we would acknowledge them, we would encourage them, we would be like look at how this person did this, tell us about that experience and how did it go. And, um, and it's something that I realized, um, not long ago that I was like yo, that is so similar. I hadn't even noticed that it's very similar to what I do now in my weekly capacita and co-working sessions, like it's much less teaching that I did in those meetings back then, but so much of the mission of bringing us together so that we can see each other on camera as we work alongside each other and then having us introduce ourselves and, you know, kind of share our wins and share what's going on with us. I mean it helps remove that loneliness. And I didn't see it in that way back then and I certainly didn't start Cops, even Coworking, with that thought in mind. But after having done it now for two years, I can see that the pattern is still there, it's a direct relation to it and I hadn't seen that.

Speaker 1 46:45

So I credit this first job as my taste into entrepreneurship, because it really did show me what is possible outside of just the original plan that was laid out in front of me. And so I had that foundation and got the itch of, oh, I can build something or I can do something or I am capable. And getting acknowledged and praised, albeit for my accomplishments in this field and on that track, was great to be recognized for the skills that were, being able to teach and being able to encourage my fellow sales reps and being able to do all of the things that weren't in my original plan, if you will, or the plan that was laid out for me. So this job really did kind of lay that foundation and had me be in the positions to teach, and so I've been teaching training encouraging since then, when I started in 2008. And so I like to start here, although I expand, expanded quite a bit on it, because that's where my journey into entrepreneurship started and, like I said, when I left there shortly after, I was not just burnt out but, turns out, my body was like you're done, and so I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, which was its own journey in and of itself and scary and dark.

Speaker 1 48:36

And I was 24 when I was diagnosed, so I was so young and I was taking pain management classes alongside 60 and 70 year olds and just wrapping my head around the concept that was fibromyalgia doesn't go anywhere, and it's something that I now get to live with and manage this pain that I made on a daily basis, and it's definitely changed everything. I'm going from how much I wasn't taking care of myself during that season to recognizing how I needed to check the pace of my life, my health and, shortly after being diagnosed, I had a couple of really bad car accidents. So I ended up being in physical therapy and really focused on healing and my health shortly after leaving this job. So, if you're still here, I appreciate you for hanging out and listening to my story. I feel like I might need to break this up into part one and part two in order to make it easier to listen through. So that's exactly what we did here today y'all, we split this reintroduction to yours truly into two parts because not only am I long winded, my journey is not linear and there are plenty of stories to tell here, and so we broke this up into two parts to make it easier to consume.

Speaker 1 50:14

So if you are interested to continue listening to the rest of my HIFHA journey, where I jump into my creative pursuits and the beginning of my photography journey, tune in to the next episode, which is a continuation of my journey. We just split it up into two. So thank you. Thank you again for hanging out with me today and getting to know me just a bit more through this past hour going down memory lane. Las amo, thank you for being here. As always, until next time. I'm your host, akita Azuleta. Thank you for listening to the Cabecito con Jefas podcast. Well, jefas, that's a wrap for today's episode. I hope you're leaving with fresh ideas, encouragement and inspiration to keep going.

Speaker 1 51:06

Being a jefa isn't about having it all figured out. It's about showing up, learning, growing and taking imperfect action towards our vision. Remember, jefa, you are not alone. This community is here to support you, cheer you on and celebrate your wins, because we go farther together. So let's do it. Scared pero juntas. If you enjoyed today's episode, show some love by leaving a review and sharing it with a fellow jefa. Be sure to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss the incredible stories we have in store.

Speaker 1 51:37

If you're looking for a space to connect and focus, join our cafecito and co-working sessions. Sign up to our email list to get those invitations directly to your inbox. So come as you are when you can and surround yourself with your fellow jefas. I can't wait to connect with you at a future cafecito. Connect and follow along with the community on Instagram at cafecito con jefas, and you can reach out to yours truly directly at lajefaquita. If you're ready to grow your brand online and looking for guidance, book a free consultation with me, and together we'll develop strategies that are in alignment with the season you're in. I'd be honored to walk with you on your jefa journey. Before you go, remember that being a jefa is an ever evolving journey. There's no rush and no finish line. Just keep going. Pasito a pasito Until next time. I'm your host, gita Zuleta. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Cafecito con Jefas podcast.