Expand Your Capacity: Break Through The Barriers Of Life With Lisa Fabrega

 

We’re all searching for strategies to make the best of our lives, find success, and live a fulfilled life. Yet, it can sometimes feel like no matter how many strategies we have in our toolbox, the kind of life we want still seems far off. Today’s guest believes that it’s not your strategy; it’s your capacity. Host, Rodney Flowers, interviews Lisa Fabrega, a keynote speaker and a leadership coach who has been helping ambitious women expand their capacity to handle more growth, wealth, and success. In this episode, Lisa imparts some wisdom to us, helping us break through the boundaries that hold us back from getting to the next level. How do we detoxify ourselves from limiting beliefs? How do we remove the things that make us small and keep us from stepping up? Lisa answers these questions and more, tapping into boundaries, anger, self-image, and our mental standpoint. In our quest to achieve something, be that in business or our personal lives, it helps to be reminded to never stop developing ourselves and staying true to our heart and soul.

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Expand Your Capacity: Break Through The Barriers Of Life With Lisa Fabrega

I am excited about this show. I have Lisa Fabrega with me. She is a leadership coach who helps ambitious women expand their capacity to handle more growth, wealth, and success. For more than ten years, she has helped entrepreneurs, corporate executives, Academy award nominees, and Nobel Prize organization candidates break through boundaries that have been holding them back from their next level. Her signature approach enables clients to reach their highest levels of success and impact. She addresses thousands of people both onstage as a keynote speaker, as well as a parent on podcasts, including the Unmistakable Creative, Her Rules Radio, and Tell Me A Story with Debra Silverman. Welcome to the show, Ms. Lisa Fabrega.

Thank you. I love that intro.

I’m glad you’re here. You are a powerhouse. You help ambitious women expand their capacity. Tell us a little bit about that.

It’s not something that we talk about a lot on our path to success, and that is exactly why I talk about it because to me it’s the missing link. You know how when people win those huge lottery pots, they win $300 million and then you check back in with them a few years later and they’re totally broke and they lost all the money? That is because they don’t have the capacity to hold that new reality of wealth. They were used to having a certain amount, they got it and they freaked out, they sabotaged and they had to spend it down to where they were before. That is a metaphor that I use a lot when I talk about capacity work. If we want to relay it back to our businesses, when we start growing and we start going to the next level, or we’re all growth-oriented individuals here, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this.

When we’re going to the next level, there are always new challenges that come our way. There are certain challenges that strategies can’t address because, at a certain point, you know the strategies. You know what you’ve got to do to succeed. What’s the missing link? What happens when you’re trying all the strategies and the strategies aren’t working? What happens when you’re doing what the experts are telling you, but you can’t get past that revenue plateau? That’s where capacity comes in. The reason I even got into this work is that when I started my business, I was working with ambitious women from the very beginning. I noticed that a lot of them were coming to me after already having spent a lot of money trying to succeed or get past the plateau. Maybe they had already succeeded well and they hit a wall and they couldn’t figure out why.

Number one, maybe they’re so tired and burned out all the time when they love what they’re doing or they had hit a certain revenue plateau for the last 2 or 3 years, they could not figure it out. They couldn’t get past it no matter what they tried. Some of the women I worked with were coming to me because their rise to success was destroying their marriage and they’ve hit a wall in their marriage. I’ve worked with some men too. What happens when we’re there? I started getting curious and I started going, “What’s going on?” I noticed that when they would come to work with me, they would suddenly start busting past those walls or plateaus that they had hit.

I started getting curious about that. I realized that what I was doing with them, I was helping them completely change what they saw themselves as who they thought they were and also what they thought they were capable of. For example, a good story that I love to tell is one of my clients has had a huge amount of success. She has been on Oprah’s couch, on her TV show. She had built this business and had a nice following. She had a good engagement and millions of followers on her blog. It happened over the years after that experience with Oprah that she hit the ceiling and she could not move past it. She spent a lot of money talking to a bunch of different business coaches and strategists to help her.

It's not your strategy. It's your capacity. Click To Tweet

They were telling her, “It’s your business model? It’s your marketing.” She tried everything and she spent all the money and she was still not doing the revenue that she wanted to do and it has slowly declined. On top of it, when I got on the phone with her, she was like, “I feel like quitting completely and tanking this business. I don’t even like it anymore. I don’t even like my message anymore. It doesn’t align with who I am.” We started working on her capacity and we realized that underneath this, there was a block because she was a very creative person and she wasn’t putting any of that into her branding at all. You couldn’t see it. There was this perfect glossy thing that some branding experts told her to create, but she wasn’t connected to it and it wasn’t showing who she was.

Who we are, when we show that, it shows some of our greatest gifts and some of our greatest gifts make us the most money. We went back and we found a memory from her childhood where her mother was creative. She felt that if she was creative and was seen as creative in her work, that it would be surpassing her mother or dishonoring her mother. Only her mother was allowed to be the artist. When we cleared that and we spent at her capacity, which I call visibility capacity, allowing yourself to be fully seen, she started infusing that into her work. Her business took off. She went from charging $10,000 to $25,000 and up for a client. She’s doing great. Her whole business is completely reflective of who she is. That’s an example of strategies that aren’t going to help you with that. I always say, “It’s not your strategy. It’s your capacity.”

I’m a firm believer that whenever you’re achieving something, and I believe this with everything, whether it’s money, your business, your career relationships, you have to be the thing before you get the thing, especially with relationships. We have this vision of being married to this wonderful person. We have this list of characteristics and traits that we want this person to have. We stop right there. That’s what I’m looking for, but we don’t get it. We’re then upset, “Why am I not getting this?” It’s because we didn’t take the next step to understand, “If that’s the person you want, what person is that person going to want and are you that?” In business, it’s the same thing. If you want to make a million or you want to do this in your business, you’ve got to think about if that’s the way your business is doing and the role that you play in this business, who do you have to be to do that? Are you being that right now? If you’re not, then that’s what you need to work on in order for that to happen, in my opinion. What do you think about that?

I completely agree with you. There are so many people who are like, “If I get this funnel strategy from this person and put it on top of my business, I’m going to work.” Let’s say that you’re doing that funnel strategy because you want to bring in $300,000 from that funnel in the next year. Who do you have to be a $300,000 funnel person? Where does your team need to be? What do your structures need to look like? Who do you need to show yourself as? What do your boundaries need to be like? What does your emotional capacity need to look like? When we get bigger and more people know about us and we’re exposing ourselves to larger audiences of people, there are always going to be haters. There are always going to be people that don’t like what you do. To your point, who do you have to be to handle that level of visibility and exposure? A lot of people don’t think about that because they’re so focused on making the money that they forget to develop themselves to match the money that they’re trying to achieve.

The identity is more important. You see people that seem to be successful so easily. It comes naturally but I think their identity is very conducive to what they are accomplishing. We want that same thing, but our approach is different. We go do what they’ve done, but we haven’t taken on their identity. To me, the identity is the most important step because, without that, you can do all these steps, but not have the success because you haven’t put on that armor, that outfit or those fatigues. You haven’t put on that uniform to be that million-dollar guy or this or that or whatever it is. That is troubling for a lot of people when you realize what’s required in order to be a million-dollar guy or to be the head CEO because you’ve got to put on all of it.

You can’t put on a little bit. You can’t put the pants on and not put a shirt on. You can’t put a shirt on and not put the pants on. You’ve got to put all of it on. That’s good and the bad. When they found out what it takes, then it’s like, “I don’t know if I want this or not. I didn’t ask for all of this. I want glamour.” You’re so right because it is that capacity to take on all of that and be comfortable. That’s another thing. It’s the comfortability of having that on a day-to-day basis and being okay with it. That’s a good question to ask yourself. If you want to be that million-dollar person or girl or whatever it is, are you comfortable wearing that uniform on a day-to-day basis? Is that something that you ask your clients?

Absolutely and there are many reasons why you might not be comfortable. One of the things I noticed is people go, “I’m not comfortable, so maybe I’m not cut out for this.” I go, “No.” When I hear that, I’m like, “Come on, stop giving up so easily. If you’re not comfortable, then why aren’t you comfortable?” That’s when we get into, “What’d you learn growing up about money? What’d you learn growing up about visible?” You hear all these people say things to kids like, “Don’t get too big for your britches. Be humble. People who have money are greedy and horrible.” We hear all these things and it’s not from our own families, cultures, or communities, but it’s also in the media. We’re getting all these messages. Particularly for women, there are messages about how you have to look and how you have to be and what makes you attractive.

For men, it’s the same thing. Men get hit with the same stuff. We have to overcome so much conditioning to be comfortable being ourselves and not just being ourselves, but being the greatest version of ourselves. That’s why a lot of the capacity work that I ended up doing with people is around what I call embodiment capacity. What you’re talking about is embodying that million-dollar person. It’s not enough to say, “Here’s my plan to make $1 million.” Who are you being? Who are you embodying? Embodiment means digging deep into what your beliefs are, what you learned, what are you holding? There’s trauma that we hold in our muscles, our nervous systems, and our tissues. We’ve got to start to undo all that stuff because your body has to be along for the ride. Your mind has to be along for the ride. Your soul, your heart, whatever you want to call it has to be along for the ride in order for that goal to happen.

 

How do we begin to detoxify ourselves? That’s the first step. You can’t put new stuff on top of old stuff, because then you got a mess. How do we detoxify these limiting beliefs, all of the programming, and all of this stuff in order to take on something new and great?

The most important thing you can do first is to develop awareness on where your blocks are, because once you know what your exact blocks are, then you can go, “Now I’m going to work on this. I know it’s in this area. Let me dive into working on this area.” For me, particularly, I have a system because I’ve worked with so many people in the years of having a business and doing this work. I’ve noticed patterns. I’ve noticed that people tend to have six areas that they struggle with when it comes to their capacity and expanding their capacity to go to that next level. The first one is money. The second one is visibility. The third one is the purpose. The fourth one is embodiment. The fifth one is structures and the sixth one is boundaries.

What I would say is, if you’re reading this, I want you to write these down on a piece of paper and I’m going to walk through them with you. Money capacity. What does that mean? Score yourself. How do I score in this area? Money capacity is your ability to earn, save, and invest larger and larger amounts of money every year. Is that happening for you? How do you feel about money? You get nervous quoting your prices to people because you think they’re going to be scandalized by your prices? Whatever it might be, score yourself in that area.

Visibility capacity is your ability to be fully seen in what you do. That means that who you’re bringing to the table when you’re showing up is you. You’re letting me see all of you. You’re letting me see all of your gifts, all of your talents. You’re not hiding anything because you’re embarrassed. You used to be a scientist and you’re doing intuitive work. You’re not hiding that from your scientific community. You’re being yourself. The visibility one is honestly the biggest one I work on with people. How do you score there?

Let’s go to purpose. What’s purpose capacity? I call it the inside matching the outside, which means are you building a business because someone told you that would make a lot of money? Is that who you are inside? In order to have longevity and I’m telling you because I’ve been in this role for years, you’ve got to love what you do. It’s got to be connected to your purpose because there are so many stressful things that happen. The capacity for stress that I have is tremendous in comparison to when I started. If you don’t have your purpose connected to what’s showing up as your work in the outer world, you’ve got to look at that because that does not allow you to have longevity. You’re going to give up too easily if you’re not passionate about it.

We then have an embodiment. Embodiment is your emotional capacity. How thrown off do you get by a hater? How thrown off do you get by someone big in your industry disagreeing with an opinion that you’re very passionate about? If you’re doing a launch and you’re freaking out if all the technology goes wrong and your team quit because you stressed them out so much. How do you score there? We then got structures. This is what people struggle with because those are the foundations that are going to lift you up to your next level and I don’t just mean your team. How are you managing your time and what help do you have at home?

Sometimes there are people who have businesses and they’re not asking their partners for help and they’re doing everything and trying to run a business. You can’t do that. Hire someone to come and help you clean if you can. Hire someone who can help you with the kids if you can. Make an agreement with your partner that you don’t get interrupted during business calls when you’re on a business call. They’ll have your back and they’ll help you that way. What are the foundations in your business like and in your life? Are they lifting you up to where you want to go?

An image deficit results from knowing we have all the potential in the world to make such a large impact, but not seeing it in yourself. Click To Tweet

Lastly, we have boundaries. It is a tricky one because we think of boundaries as walls. Boundaries are not walls. Boundaries are you saying to the universe, to people what you are and what you aren’t available for. That also includes boundaries with ourselves. We allow ourselves to go down these crazy rabbit holes of thoughts that freak us out or make us afraid. How good are you at going, “I’m not going to think negatively about this. I’m going to stop this right now. I’m going to redirect my thoughts. I’m going to stay in my empower thinking?” That’s a self-boundary.

The other thing about boundaries is that boundaries are responsive. Boundaries change. You might be operating with the boundaries that worked for you up until now but if you want to get to the million-dollar version of you, what boundaries does that person have? Do you have those boundaries now? Score yourself on all of these and that will tell you where you’ve got to look first and where are you going to start working first and observing it. Awareness is 90% of solving a problem.

I want to thank you for that. I thought those six key traits are amazing. I want to dive into a few of them if we can because I’ve been doing this work for a while myself. One of the things that I find is a struggle for people is this visibility piece, as you’ve experienced as well. I want to dive into this because this image is huge. It could be very destructing because some people, their images are far beyond where they are, and it creates an illusion. It’s deceiving. They get caught up in having that image, but not necessarily being able to back it up when you put it on your back. You see it as that’s all it is. It’s an image.

On the contrary, it’s having all the potential in the world to make such a large impact, but not seeing it in yourself and we now have an image deficit. How do we get women to expand in their image? We’re going to talk about bringing the other person back. We would talk about that person, but I want to talk about the person who doesn’t see themselves in the light that they have been created. I want to address this person. This to me is where the workbook capacity becomes so important because we all have adopted that dream and desire isn’t for you.

I believe that your success has a direct impact on others around you, even those on the other side of the world, and especially what you are bringing forward that thing that you were created to do, it has an impact. Even when you don’t do it has an impact. We don’t get to see your beauty in your creativity, in your expression. This could be a deficit to you expressing yourself. It is for a lot of people. How do we tackle the image and remove the fear and all of those things that want to keep us playing small instead of stepping up and expressing who we are? How do we handle this?

I love everything you said, and I couldn’t agree with it more. You’re right, I have a virtual retreat that I do on visibility capacity. That one always sells out because people have this. The first thing I would do if this was a client coming to me is I want to create awareness around, “How am I seeing myself?” Sometimes it’s hard to know how we’re seeing ourselves. How do we figure that out? Let’s look at our actions. Let’s look at what we’re doing because what we do is like a mirror for what we believe about ourselves. It’s not just what we do, but start looking at the people you’re attracting. Start looking at the behaviors of the people who you hang out around. That also is a mirror for what you believe about yourself.

If you’re around mean people, for example, or people who say things like, “It’s tough love,” but I’m sticking you with an insult underneath that. What do you believe about yourself if people are doing that to you? Meaning, why do you believe that you’re not worthy of better treatment? That’s a good example. Looking at the people around you and what they’re mirroring back to you about what you tolerate and accept for yourself because that affects your self-image. If you’re around people that are not uplifting you with their words, it’s going to start to change what you believe about yourself, and they’re putting you down. I’ll give you a great example. I was working with a coach many years ago and I liked her very much. I told her, “Now, it’s time to raise my prices. This is the number that feels aligned for the price of working with me based on the results my clients get.” When I told her the price, her face went white. She turned like a ghost.

She had never charged that much money so she couldn’t see me charging that much money. The minute I saw her face when I said the number, I went, “No, you can’t be my coach anymore,” because I need a coach who goes, “That’s nothing. Charge more.” If I don’t have someone seeing me as capable of being able to charge that, I’m doing it all by myself. I think it was Thomas Moore who said, “No man is an island.” No woman is an island. No human is an island. It’s true. We can’t do things all by ourselves. It’s scary enough to put yourself out there. We need supportive people around us. That’s one example of how people treat you or who you allow into your sphere and what behavior you allow from them can give you some insight into what you think about yourself.

 

After that is your action. If you’re like, “I know I’ve got to put that blog post up this week,” and then you repeatedly don’t do it, what does that reveal about what you are thinking about and how you’re seeing? It’s like, “I can’t do it. I’m not creative, I’m not tech-savvy,” whatever. I would say sit down and start writing out on a daily basis when you notice your actions, instead of standing up for myself and telling that person, “No, you can’t push me around. I have a voice in this too.” I shut down and was like, “Fine.” What does that reveal about how you see yourself? You see yourself as meek and as powerless. To be honest, and this is controversial for a lot of people, but I believe in this. The power of anger is so important. I love anger. I don’t mean destructive anger that’s going out and hurting other people. We have such a taboo around anger in our culture that we don’t realize what a powerful emotion it is to get our motors going.

I know that’s probably disturbing for a lot of people. I understand where you’re going. I’m an aggressive person and I know how to leverage anger and aggression. It’s purposeful. Please explain to us what you mean by you love anger and how they can get the motor going. Give us the juicy details around that.

To me, anger and passion are very closely related. They’re two sides of the same coin. I think that because we’re told anger is bad. Keep your anger down that we don’t allow the anger to go, “I’m fed up with this way I talk to myself. I’m fed up with this way that I treat myself. I’m fed up on how I buy into these people’s ideas of who I am.” That fed upness, to me and my experience working with thousands of people, is one of the best fuels. It doesn’t mean you go out and start telling everybody off. That’s a waste of your energy. I’d rather you get that like, “I’m fed up with always being the one that makes less than $100,000 a year. I’m fed up with always being the one that doesn’t speak up in that meeting. I’m fed up with thinking that I don’t deserve to have what I want.” That anger of that fed upness can allow you to have a breakthrough and go, “That’s it. I’m done with this.”

I had a client who said to me, “I am so done with busting and not making more than $40,000 a year.” She said, “I am done with it.” There’s a power. When you say I am done, you say it out loud into the universe, “I’m done.” The energy means I’m done behind that. It’s not, “I’m done. I don’t mean it.” That little level of fed upness, it kicks off a chain reaction in the universe because the intention behind your words is true. Whatever’s out there will come to meet you now where you now are. Also, you will truly be done. You’re so angry about it, you’re not going to let it happen again. That’s how anger is a wonderful fuel. To me, anger is the same emotion like joy, sadness, and exhilaration. Whatever emotion you’re having, it’s a feeling. It’s what you do with that feeling that makes a difference.

What are your thoughts about values? When I dig deep into visibility and image, it comes down to values as well because your behavior is dictated by those deep-rooted things that you value, especially your unconscious behavior. Things you do are driven by something. We never challenge our values. It’s subtle like our names. We accept them. “That’s what my momma gave me and so this is who I am.” We go all of our lives and never check the values. When it comes to this image thing, you have to reassess your values. You’ve heard stories where this guy or girl got very successful and then her friends changed.

The people that feel left like, “She got money, so now she can’t hang out with us. She’s better than us.” I don’t believe that one bit, but what I do believe is that her values changed. Because the values changed, some of the things that she used to do, she doesn’t value those things anymore. She values this and because their values are not aligned with her values, now you can’t hang out. You’re not on the same frequency and wavelength. I’m not even that same person. I am, but my values have changed. You think I’m different, and I probably am a little bit in the way I move, but it’s because the inner side of me has shifted.

I think that has a lot to do with image as well because a lot of image issues are based on fear. When you are not afraid to put this stuff out, it’s not that you’re bold and confident. I don’t know those characteristics, but it’s more so I have a job to do. I value being able to put good content, being able to stand in front of people and deliver something that they need. I value being able to solve a problem and do it in a way where people get it. I want to do it confidently so that people believe in me. I want to be authentic. If you’re valuing those types of things, you may show up in a way that causes your image to be attractive and powerful. Underlying all of that are those deep-rooted values. What are your thoughts about that?

Your success has a direct impact on others around you, especially through what you are bringing forward. Click To Tweet

We get taught our values from our families or the adults around us as we’re growing up and a lot of us don’t question, “Is that my value?” If you have someone who’s like, “Be humble. Don’t be too big for your britches. Don’t be trying to take up all the attention.” If that was value in your family, you might be having that as a value and wondering why you can’t seem to put yourself out there more than you already do. We have to go, “Where does that value come from? Is that what I believe?” Let’s use your example. If I want to be at $1 million, what values do I need to have that I don’t have? Also, there’s a side thing here that flows into this, which is that a lot of people that I work with are afraid. It’s a common fear I see of being more visible because they think they’re going to get swept up into something and lose themselves. That comes back to values.

If you know your values, you’re not going to get swept up by anything. I had a client who had a book coming out and she knew the book was going to be a big hit. They were already lining up publicity for her and all this stuff. She came to me in a panic and she said, “I’m terrified. I want to cancel this whole thing.” I said, “Why?” She was like, “I’m afraid that it’s going to be so big that I’m not going to get to have time with my family. The most important value for me is to be home with my family for dinner so I can see my husband and my kids. I don’t want any level of fame or publicity to interrupt that.” I said, “Who says it has to? Have you thought of calling the publicist and saying, ‘By the way, I will say yes to all interviews, but you are not to schedule any meetings for me that’s 5:00 every day? I am not available on weekends.’” She was like, “I can do that.” I said, “Yes, you can.”

We think that some whirlwind is going to come and sweep us away. Part of it is maybe you haven’t defined your values. Some part of you that’s wisdom and some part of you knows, “I better get this together and know what I’m about and what I stand for before that wave comes in.” That’s when you see people losing themselves because they didn’t define that for themselves. That’s boundaries too. They didn’t define those boundaries for themselves about what they are and are available for. It could be that, but it could also be like this victim mindset that we get into. We forget that we have the power and that we can say no.

I’ve helped so many people with job negotiations too. The companies coming in and going, “We want you to do this.” They’re like, “No, here’s what I want. I want to work from home these many days. I want to be available for this. I want to be paid this salary. Take it or leave it,” because that’s their value. What I’m saying is, for example, when I’ve had clients who were negotiating with companies and they want to make sure that they’re home on Fridays because they want to be with their kids on Fridays. They want to work from home so they can be with their kids or see their husband when they get home. Whatever it might be, if those values are clear, you go into those negotiations. In that particular case, that client of mine, she took a hard stance.

She was like, “This is what I want.” She thought, “I don’t know that they’re ever going to be able to grant this.” I said, “It doesn’t matter. You asked for it, put it out there.” It will tell you if you want to work with that company and how they respond to you. If they’re not valuing you as a human being, they’re going to come to you in a negative way. If they value your skillset, they know you’re an addition to their team, they’re going to do what they can to work with you. They came back, they offered her more salary. They gave her everything she wanted, and she became the highest-paid woman in her country by doing that particular job.

That takes me back to knowing your worth because when you know your worth, then you can have that level of expectation. There’s a level of expectancy because of who you are. If you don’t know who you are and what you have to offer, then you can’t have the confidence that someone would grant that expectation because you’re not completely sure of yourself. When you are sure, you won’t stand for anything less than that expectation because you’re worth that. Thank you for that because that is a check as well, being in a place where you know what your worth is for better or for worse. When you know if there is a need to increase that in order for you to have what it is you want, then that’s an area where you can spend some time and attention, increasing that capacity in your worth.

With this whole image thing, we may not feel that we’re worthy of that spotlight. We don’t feel that we’re worthy of the attention. We don’t feel that we’re worthy of the money. We don’t feel that we’re worthy of the position and that has everything to do with us. It doesn’t have anything to do with anyone out there. It’s you looking at you. If that is an issue, then what are you going to do to increase that value or that worth so that you can remove those feelings? Sometimes we try to operate without having done the work to increase the worth. We want to move forward, but yet your image is holding you back because that’s exposing you.

 

If you have issues with that, then that’s the true check and assessment of yourself to realize, “Let me go back and work on this right here.” When I step out or when I go and ask for it or when I go and I publish this or I produce this, I’m going to be able to go 100%. If I’m not going to 100%, whatever percentage is remaining has to be addressed so that your worth is at 100%. Everything can’t be at 100% and your worth is at 50%. That’s not going to work. There’s only so far you’re going to be able to go before you hit that. That piece of you has to match up with the rest of you.

I love that you said this. One of the ways to increase our sense of self-worth is boundaries. That’s why I talked about boundary capacity. What am I available for and what am I not? What am I unconsciously making myself available for that is reinforcing that I’m not worthy? Another good way to build a sense of self-worth is to charge more money for your services and for what you do. It’s scary the first time. This one works, particularly for people who think, “Who’s going to pay me? Is what I do that valuable?” That’s a worthiness issue. The first person says yes and they’re happy with the work that they’re doing with you, that starts to build your confidence and you go, “I can charge this much. No one’s going, ‘I can’t believe that I paid all that money and I only got this.’” Honestly, if you get someone like that, that’s probably not the right client for you. Those are two small ways.

With boundaries, we’re basically saying like, “I value in myself enough to say no to this.” You can start small. You could start with the smallest little boundaries. You could even say to a spouse or a good friend who loves you and supports you, “I was listening to this podcast the other day and I heard that I’ve got to get better at doing boundaries. Would you mind helping me? I’m going to set some boundaries with you.” If they support you, they’ll go, “Sure. I’d love to help you with that.” I love what you’re saying about self-worth. Those are two small, tiny ways, or not even raising your prices, but refusing to discount. People are like, “Can you give me a deal?” “No, there are no deals available.” It’s these little subconscious ways that you start building your worth up.

I love your philosophy around boundaries as well. I believe that you want people around you that can see your work, even when you don’t. There’s a friend of mine that she and her friend have a saying, “I’m going to be the type of friend that will sing your song even when you have forgotten the words to sing it yourself.” It’s not verbatim, but it’s something along those lines. The point of that is you want someone that can see your work in you, even when you may have forgotten your worth or you can’t see it yourself. Having boundaries around you that won’t allow anyone that’s not going to truly see your worth, you need those boundaries. That’s a detriment to your image, your success, and your capacity. That’s important as well.

That’s why we need coaches. That’s why we need performance coaches. That’s why we need mentors. These cycles happen all the time when you’re running a business for a long time or even if you have a career for a long time. There are moments where you doubt yourself. You’re like, “Am I doing the right thing right now? Am I thinking too big?” A good mentor or coach, they see you at your highest potential. They’re holding that for you. They’re holding that vision and that space for you. When you doubt yourself, you go to them and they go, “What are you talking about?” I did it for a client. She got involved in some drama. I left her a voice message. I said, “What are you doing? Why are you getting involved in all this petty nonsense? Let those petty people do their petty thing. You are a queen. Queens don’t get involved in petty nonsense. Get back in your lane.” She was like, “You’re right. Thank you.” You need people who are going to go, “Snap out of it. I see you for who you are.”

Let’s talk about the last thing. We’ve touched on it a little bit, but I want to talk about structure because this is very painful for a lot of people, especially when we’re talking about putting a structure in place that per se a million-dollar person would have in place, being able to sustain that structure or a queen or a lady boss. Whatever your vision is, it requires some level of structure, but this is painful for people. Explain to us what is the right way or approach to go about putting a strong structure in place, not only putting into place but sticking to it?

Sticking to it is the hard part. I’ll give you a good example of sticking to it, being hard, and how to work with that. Structure can mean so many things. It can mean, what help do you have at home? What help do you have at your office or in your work? What team do you have? Do you have the right team? Do you have people on your team that have a bad attitude that needs to go? I went to a marketing conference back in 2014 and there was a speaker there that had a breakout session and it was called How to Scale to Eight Figures. I went obviously to that session because I want to know. This guy blew me away because the only thing he talked about for an hour was your team. He said, “You get to eight figures with the right team. It’s not about you. Once you get to the seven-figures, you can’t do it all by yourself. You need a whole different structure.

If you have someone on your team that has a bad attitude, I don’t care how good they are at what they do because you’re holding onto them because they’re so good at what they do. If they have a bad attitude, they’re going to poison your entire team. You need to fire them immediately. Obviously, talk to them and if they can’t turn that around, you need to let that person go immediately. How many of you have teams with some members who are not bringing a positive, inspired ‘let’s do this’ attitude because you need that?” That’s a team structure.

Energy is the intangible that goes beyond money and time at a certain point in your success. Click To Tweet

Sometimes we’ve got team members doing too many things and you split it into two roles. That’s a team example of structures. What I would do is I would ask myself, “If I want to get to $1 million, what support would I need that I don’t have right now?” Start exploring that with your mind. Start writing on a few ideas. The other aspect of structure is your calendar. People struggle with this. There’s a ton of time management hacks out there. I talked to so many people who say, “Those hacks don’t work for me.” Honestly, we have to stop this thing. It’s coming back to the part of our conversation where we think other people know better than us and that we don’t know our own way of working.

For a long time, I thought that I could not do things last minute, that it was a bad thing. I work well doing things last minute. That’s where I thrive. That’s where my best ideas come from. I started arranging my calendar so that I could do things last minute. You can do that. You don’t have to make what you do wrong. Some people don’t like having super structured calendars. They’re like, “I never stick to it.” Don’t make your calendar super structured. Put, “Tuesdays is the day that I write marketing copy.” Block the whole day so that you have this loose schedule. You know that at some point in that day you get to write the copy. Also being kinder to ourselves and honoring the ways that we work best and not making it wrong because so-and-so said that’s not how you’re supposed to do things. Those are ways that we can start to stick more to our structural plans rather than trying to fit ourselves into something and then beating ourselves up because it didn’t work for us.

A lot of what you’re talking about has a lot to do with what we’ve already talked about, which is knowing yourself and understanding who you are. What works for you, what doesn’t work for you and setting your structure up in a way that is conducive to your success. I totally agree adopting some of these philosophies and all of them are good, but they might not be good for you. It’s like, “There are a lot of good mates out there, but it might not be the one for you.” You’ve got to find the one that works for you that you can live with. When you understand who you are, that’s freedom. I love coaches, I love mentors. I’m going to give you a lot of suggestions, but at the end of the day, it’s what works for you. It could be that you didn’t have any ideas at first, and now you have a plethora of ideas to choose and to play with. You find the ones that fit perfectly for you.

I also want to talk about the intangible structure, because you talk about how when you get to that 7-figure, 8-figure, things change, your structure changes. There are things that become more important. You talked about a bad attitude. When you talk to the average entrepreneur or an average go-getter, the average person is professional in your career and making it happen. Talk about the tangibles. This is what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to know this, you’ve got to study this. You’ve got to read this. You can have this mentor and do all those things are great. The things we failed to talk about that are important, even at the $10,000, $40,000, $80,000, $90,000 to $100,000, $150,000 level are those intangibles. The attitudes, the mindset, and the mental structure. Let’s talk about that. How about that one? There’s a capacity that you need from a mental standpoint in order to change the game to go to a higher level. What are your thoughts about that?

You need it from a mental and emotional standpoint. For me, I notice every time I’m called to go to another level of my leaderships, some old stuff comes up for me to process always. This happens for every single one of my clients. That’s why when you see people who are extremely successful, I’m talking about the real high-performers of the world, somebody like Oprah. Those people, they have strategists, but they’ve got someone. For Oprah, it’s Gayle, and Stedman too. She’s got people around her that are helping her with the emotional and mental piece. I don’t know if you watch the show Billions, it’s on HBO, but Billions is about a billionaire.

He’s got all sorts of ethical problems. The example I’m going to use him for is that his most valued staff member is a physical performance coach. Not his analysts, not his investors, and his traders. It’s valuable to him, but he keeps this woman who’s his performance coach. She comes into the office and she is constantly available. There’s one episode where he makes something a $300 million mistake and then loses $300 million. It’s a huge blunder. Do you know who he calls first? Her. He doesn’t call his strategists. He doesn’t call his CFO. He doesn’t call the COO. He calls this woman and they go on this long walk for eight hours where she’s talking about his childhood. He realizes that an abusive experience he had when he was a younger kid led him to make a bad decision. That bad decision caused him to lose $300 million.

I noticed for myself that when it’s time for me to go to the next level, old fears that I didn’t even know were there come up. Old stuff from when I was a kid and I go, “That’s interesting. I guess it’s time to tackle that one.” I had a client who couldn’t make about $200,000 in her business, no matter what she did. We found out that when she was a young kid, her father walked out on her mother when her mother got promoted and started making $200,000 and making more than the father. That hurt the father’s ego. He couldn’t handle it. He walked out on the family. In her mind, subconsciously, when she started going up and up, when she started getting close to that $200,000, she was blind to it.

She would start doing all sorts of little things that was sabotaging the revenue or she would get sick all of a sudden for a couple of weeks and couldn’t move forward. As they say, “New level, new devil,” and that is how it works. New devils come up for you to deal with. If you’re talking about intangibles, we can also look at it from this lens. When we start our businesses, our priority is money. We’ve got to make money. We need profit. As you start growing and as things started getting into a groove, then the priority becomes time. You get to a point where time is more valuable to you than money. The level nobody talks about is energy. That’s the third level. Where are you putting your energy into?

 

This is nuanced because there are people who drain our energy. There are people who make us do a lot of emotional labor. There are people in our teams that make us do a lot of emotional labor. I have a rule on my team. They get a video when they get hired and it says, “How to Get Fired.” It’s a nicer title but that’s essentially what the video is about. One of the points I make is do not make me or other people on the team do emotional labor. If you ask a team member a question and they go, “I don’t know.” That’s not an appropriate answer. You’re going to make me have to come after you again and ask you a follow-up question? That’s emotional labor. We’re like, “What’s the big deal. It’s asking a follow-up question.” When you’re doing that with all the relationships in your life, your energy, it’s like death by paper cut. You are getting slowly drained. You wonder why you’re burned out, exhausted, not passionate about what you’re doing anymore, or feel you can’t handle the next level. Energy is the intangible that goes beyond money and time at a certain point of your success.

Lisa, how can people connect with you if they wanted to work with you, learn more about you, and find out where you are and what you’re doing?

I’ve got a series of free videos. It’s called The Capacity Conversations. They’ll walk you through all the capacities and go further with all the stuff we’ve talked about here. Go to my website at LisaFabrega.com. If you put your email address right in at the top and you sign up for the newsletter, you will automatically get sent all of those videos. On Instagram it’s @LisaFabrega. On Facebook and LinkedIn, Lisa Fabrega. I’m Lisa Fabrega across all platforms.

Thank you for coming on the show. This has been a wonderful conversation and it’s full of goodness, and this is worth repeating over and over again. There’s some good stuff in this. I appreciate you being on the show with me. I want to ask you one more question and that is, what is the Game Changer Mentality message that you would like to leave with us?

It’s not your strategy. It’s your capacity.

There you have it. What is your capacity? It’s funny that we come into this world with so much potential. It’s unlimited potential. We start living and then life happens and it seemingly decreases our capacity. We get full of toxic inflammation and beliefs. If we’re not careful, it could completely wipe us out. When we realize that there’s something important for us to do, something worthwhile for us to do, we have to go back and deal with all of that stuff. Unfortunately, that’s life. There is no way around that. We don’t have control of that. At the same time, we do, because at a certain point in time, we have the responsibility to detoxify ourselves. If we’re going to move from where we are to someplace bigger, we have to deal with those things.

We have to expand ourselves and it requires removing all of that stuff that seemingly decreased who we are by not being aware. It’s not the strategy, it’s the capacity. That’s what needs the attention. Let’s focus on that. I want to challenge you to focus on your capacity. Let’s not focus on the strategy. Let’s sit that down for a while. Some of the things we talked about here, those six things that Lisa shared with us and she even asked us to write those things down. Try that uniform on, especially if you have this vision or this goal. Try that on and let us know, and it will let you know that you’re ready for that next level.

That’s the first step, putting on that uniform to say, “I’m going to look at those things. I’m going to address those things.” If you’re not willing to do that, then you have to question, “Am I ready to expand?” You only want to put on the hat, that’s just the hat. You have to put on the whole uniform. Put on the hat and try those things out. See how they work. If you have any questions, go back and hit up Lisa or hit me up. Email me, email Lisa, or connect with Lisa. Let’s all take this challenge to expand our capacity. We’re in this together. Until next time. Peace and love.

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• http://RodneyFlowers.com/essential-assertions-book/
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About Lisa Fabrega

Lisa Fabrega is a leadership coach who helps ambitious women expand their capacity to handle more growth, wealth & success. For more than ten years, she has helped entrepreneurs, corporate executives, Academy Award nominees and Nobel Prize organization candidates break through boundaries that have been holding them back from their next level. Her signature approach enables clients to reach their highest levels of success and impact. Lisa has addressed thousands of people both on stage as a keynote speaker as well as appearing on podcasts including The Unmistakable Creative, Her Rules Radio and Tell Me A Story with Debra Silverman. She’s also been featured on CNN, Yahoo! News and The Huffington Post. She splits her time between Florida and California with her two rescue dogs, Luna and Sadie.

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