Transforming Vision into Victory

Welcome back to the Ally from Corporate podcast. If you're interested in learning more about career development, job searching, and growing as the badass professional I know you are, you've come to the right place. So sit back and relax. Let's get into it. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Ally from Corporate podcast. I know usually we talk about careers, but I have an extra special guest on this time. You know, you guys know I've launched my career coaching business recently, my group coaching business. And it might look from the outside like I'm a one man show, a one woman show. Happy International Women's Day, by the way. But I'm ready to introduce you to my business coach. This is Daniel Botero. Hello, Daniel Ali.

Thank you so much for having me. This is awesome. I'm excited.

Yeah, I'm so glad you're on here. I have so many questions for you that I haven't asked you yet. But I've been waiting to ask you on this podcast because I want my listeners and my viewers to know the answers to some of these questions. But before we get into the nitty gritty details, so let's hear a little bit about you. Tell me, how did you get started in like career coaching but then transition into coaching coaches? Tell me everything.

So I think I have to go back a little bit in time. My story is kind of, I think it's interesting because I was born in Colombia to a really wealthy family, like top 1% and 1% and third generation family business. My dad dies from pancreatitis, so he's okay today. Two weeks later he's sick. Then the company then ends up going bankrupt. Nobody ever thought this company was going to go bankrupt. And so no one saved for it, you know. You know, they say first generation builds it, second maintains it, third destroys it. That led to a series of events of my mom moving to the United States with $2,000 and two suitcase. My dad never thought he was going to die at the age of 35, so never had life insurance, no nothing. And so I grew up since I was 9 years old until I graduated and have my first corporate job, living paycheck to paycheck. You know, I graduated with student loans. My mom, bless her hard work, seven days a week for 15 years straight. In fact, like we were like in immigration limbo for a really long time, right? And, and so I didn't even know if I was going to go to school. And that led to me learning work ethic from my mom, learning what was Possible from my childhood and knowing that I either wanted to be a CEO of Fortune 500 company or start my own business and had this entrepreneurial sparks growing up and started selling water from. Since I was 10, 9 years old, from the kids behind my house, selling La Coste polo, selling anything that I could except drugs because I didn't want to get deported. So I sold everything that I could. It's true. I couldn't. I couldn't. I cannot get in. I couldn't get in a fight, you know, for nine years. And so back I graduated college with two degrees, Management with a track of entrepreneurship, and marketing with a track of professional selling. And I knew that if I wanted to build be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or build something great, I needed to know how to lead people and I need to know how to sell. Because nothing happens without being sold and nothing's built without people. And so I kind of always knew those two things. And I had read, I listened to this speaker. Back then it was audio books. Like, like you, you would put a CD on your car and it said if you read a book a week for five years, you would be top 1% of any industry. And so I would go to the library and I would listen to one audiobook because I didn't like to read then for every. For every day. Oh, sorry. Every week for. Until I ran out of books there. And then I started having to read physical books, which is why I have a library behind me. And. And then that led to me wanting to like, start a business. And when I graduated, I was in between. Hey, should I go to corporate America or should I go start a business? Which at that time was called Ubike, which is like essentially like what Lime Bike is now. But this is for college campuses. They weren't even around. This is back in 2011. And all my entrepreneurship work. Professors says the best way to reach any goal is to learn from someone who's done it. So. So if you want to build a massive company one day, right, you should go work at a big company, Fortune 500 company for at least five years. They're obviously doing something right. You can learn and then do your own thing. And at this point, I decided to do it. Didn't know. There goes my U bike idea. Didn't do that. And this whole time at PepsiCo, I'm like, I'm here to learn. I'm going to just get paid to learn, right? I'm done paying college to learn. Now I'm going to get paid by someone to learn. And I was open to these opportunities. And this is kind of where career coaching happened. As someone that's, as a, as a, like, I wouldn't say entrepreneur at heart. Like somebody is like, I understand, okay, there's a problem, let me solve it. There's people playing soccer behind my house. Let me sell them water. Like, you know, like, you know, problem, solution, I make money when like, I remember being in a room where all these directors and managers at the time were like, hey, we, we're halfway through the year. We have a hiring goal of 20 people for the management training program. We only have three. And this is a really important KPI for corporate. And I'm like, this might be a silly question. I'm like, you know, brand new to corporate six months, a year, a month in, I'm in the back, I shouldn't be speaking. And I'm just super naive. And I'm like, how can we be struggling to get 20 people when you guys recruit at like 10 universities in the southeast? And if I, and you got, we don't care about the major. This is not like a major specific leadership program. You just have to have a four year degree. There's probably 10,000 people graduating a minimum from this university. How can PepsiCo, a Fortune 50 company, not get 20 people? And then they're like, hey, Daniel, the thing is, it's not a quantity. We get thousands of applicants. We just struggle to find good talent. We're looking for people like you, who are willing to work hard, who want to learn like all these things, you know, that are coachable, that have this grit mentality. And I was like, again, super naive. Like, I know a lot of people like that back at ucf, University of Central Florida. I know you guys don't currently recruit that much from there. Like I, I, I think and, but I would be more than happy to, to do part of the recruiting and you know, do my part to help the company. So they were like, sure, sure, sure, go do that. Like, they didn't think they want to go recruit at University of Florida, University of Alabama, University of Georgia, University of Miami. And long story short, that fall semester I did the career fair, I did the info sessions, I went to go speak at all the student organizations that I was part of. You know, I still had the relationships because I was just there like less than a year ago. And out of the 20 people, mind you, three of them were hired before this even happened. Like eight of them came from one college, which is UCF, which wasn't even a core school and decision. Like I do the first round of interviews and then they all go to what they bring all the top candidates to interview all the directors and the vice president all in one day. So it's like a bunch of like they call them super days or, and, and they're like, what did you do over there? And they're like, well, you're now in charge of campus recruiting. Like you now have a budget. You now have. And then for like three years I, UCF was made a core school.

Wow.

All this stuff like just because like naively I want I'll go speak at a student organization. I just didn't understand like, like why, like how are you not able to hire these people? And so the company's like, we need good people, we can't find them. And the students like, we need good companies, we need good jobs. I can't find it. I'm like, there's a bridge to be built. My entrepreneurship had, was like problem solution.

Yes. And you have taught me that I used to make a lot of business decisions based on feelings and emotion and my mood for the day. But you have taught me recently with all of your coaching to make decisions based on data. Have you always done things that way?

No, I think those are things of learning lessons either through my own personal mistakes or from reading or from learning from others. I think like as creatures we're emotional and then we're logical. And I think business is a very logical thing. And so the more we can take emotions out of business because that's what Walmart does, that's what Google does, that's what this companies do. And if I learn something from PepsiCo, is that is data driven approach because it's not an emotional thing. And I think it's hard when you're starting your own business. And I know Ali, you know this because like it's our baby. It's our baby. So when someone calls your baby ugly, you're like, oh.

I made that.

What? Yeah, you're telling me what? And so I think that for me, like I, I had, I've had to learn as somebody who's emotional, like I am pretty emotional person. I take things to heart. You know, I have to remember, like, hey, like I have to make these decisions based on data. Because if one person says my baby's ugly, okay, that's one person's opinion. But if 10 out of 10 people say it, then then they're freaking. Right? My baby is ugly. Right?

Yeah, absolutely agree. Um, before we keep talking about that I. I'm curious. You said your dad passed away at 35. My condolences. I'm so sorry to hear that. It sounds like that really shaped the rest of your life. How old are you right now?

I'm 30. I want to turn 34.

And I know that you try to live a very healthy lifestyle. Right. You are in the sauna every day. If you guys aren't following Daniel on Instagram, do it now. You'll hear about Sonic Chronicles, which I think should be called Sonicles, but oh.

Sonicles, I'm feeling it. So you're a marketing genius.

Every day. Every day I hear you say Sonic Chronicles, and I'm like, just take one little letter out. But you're also in the middle of 75 hard. Right? How's that going?

So it's good.

Psycho.

This is the second time I've done it. You know, it's not a health challenge for me anymore. I think I did like a half Ironman. I've done like marathons, things like that. Like, I think it's just a mindset thing. It's like if I, if I, if I can put my body through this challenge, then when things are hard in business or in relationships, and I know I'll be able to get through them. So it's going great. It's going now. It's like a habit. I, I put it on my calendar and I live by my calendar. So you, you, you learn to love it. I have, I have actually learned that it sucks the first couple of weeks, but after that is really great. And then, and then now I'm just used to it now I think I'm almost done. I actually think I'm like less than two weeks away.

I know. I've been counting for you. You are less than two weeks away. Because I only got three days in. I tried it maybe a couple years ago. I got three days in and I was like, all right, well, I could either start over or I could just not do it. So I quit. But I love what you say about mindset because that is something you are also teaching me. And I know you're not my therapist, but it kind of feels like you are sometimes because sometimes Rico and I wake up in the morning and we're like, oh, my gosh, look at all these emails we've got. I'm discouraged. We don't have any new clients this week. We're failures. We need, we're going to need to go get part time jobs. But every time we have a coaching call with you, our Mood goes like this afterwards because you help us shift our mindset and think about the positives. And you're like, what's not working? Let's look at the data. Okay, let's change. Let's tweak these things for next week, and we'll reevaluate. And you just take the emotion out of it. And I know that you are all about mindset, but you're also teaching us to be about mindset also, which is very powerful.

Well, I would say I'm glad that that's the case. I think I don't necessarily go in there saying, like, I'm going to motivate Allison Enrico and they're going to feel great about it. I think I go in there more on, like, what the data tells the story. Let's identify the thing. And I also, because as being a career coach and been doing. Being a career coach for 10 years, six years full time. Right. It's one of those things, like, I've been in your shoes, and so I understand. And I have a perfect example, actually, even for your audience, as somebody comes to, like, Alison, I can't find a job. And in your head, I'm like, you just. Just change this through this. Like, one of your clients go and you change this to your resume, or you're not doing this. But if you fix this and you're not worried for them, because you already know the outcome. Like, you already know the outcome. You know, like, if you control the controllables, you follow the game plan that you've put into your program, they're going to walk away with a job. And I think that's the same thing, is, like, when you come to me, like, the world is burning. I'm doing this. I'm not. And I'm like, okay, I've been there, done that. Just control the controllables. Let's look at the data. This, obviously, is the area where we need to fix. Because the data is saying, this is the problem, and so we fix it. And because I've had that problem before and I know how to fix it because I fix it for myself, you're going to be fine. And I think it's the same thing. And I think that is the power of coaching, is the power. Why if you're listening to this and you're looking for a coach, you should work with Alison. And it's the reason why Allison, even though she's a coach herself, is working with me is because going back to what my entrepreneurship professor said, the best way to reach any Goal is to learn from someone who's done it. Like, why go reinvent the wheel when you can shortcut life by learning how to do it from someone who's been there, done it?

Yeah, I wanted to make a wheel, and instead of reinventing it, I went and found the wheel maker, which is. You love that.

Which I didn't make either. Right. Like, I also learned from experiences and from books, from mentoring, from business coaches myself, because I also have a coach. And I think that the key here, and I think it's super important because I guess someone asked me was like, okay, Danielle, well, then why wouldn't I just go hire? They say, you're a coach, and I go like, look, I think you can. I think the difference is, like, if you met with Elon Musk, would you learn as much? I think the difference is there's so many gaps. Sometimes if the gaps are too big, you're not going to be able to learn. Because, look, I listen to Elon Musk and. And I watch a lot of his stuff. And not just Elon Musk. I love Alex Hermosi. You know, we talk about her mosey. Sometimes they're just too far, you know, advanced or too many steps ahead where it's hard to correlate. And I think sometimes the mentor or a coach should be someone that's not 10 steps ahead of you, is two, three steps ahead of you. And you should still look at those people like, you should still respect Elon Musk and learn from them. But I think sometimes that advice might be. You might not be ready for it at the time.

Yeah, Rico does that also. He. When we talk about our YouTube channel, he goes, well, Mr. Beast is doing these, these and this. So that's what we need to do, too. And I'm like, let's find a middle ground in between us and Mr. Beast. Yeah, really good advice. So you mentioned that you are, you know, your calendar is super full. You're busy every day. You have shown me a lot of tools to use that save me time, like Monday.com for my CRM. Like, what is that? Customer resource management. Customer something Management Relationship manager. Yeah, there we go. Calendly for scheduling meetings, I used, believe it or not, I used to keep everything in, like, a Google spreadsheet. So when you told me, like, we need to keep track of the data, I'm like, oh, God, that's going to take forever. But you have shown me so many tools that help. And I want to know you, You're a very transparent person, especially in Our meetings. You've shown your screen with your calendar on it before. What are some of your favorite tools for staying disciplined or staying organized? Like, what are your favorite tools right now?

So I don't know if it's tools, but I think it's processes and systems. And so if you make everything a priority, nothing's a priority. So I think the first thing that I, I think about is what are the, the focus. What are the top three things that I am focusing on this quarter? Right? And I always work backwards. Like I have a life plan, I have like a 10 year plan, I have a one year plan, and then I have a quarter plan, right? And then I feel, okay, what do I want to accomplish this quarter? And so this quarter there's three main things I need to, you know, focus double down on the career coaching business, like business coaching for career coaches, which include, which is a lot of marketing. We launched a YouTube channel, we're launching a community. We're doing all of this stuff, right. The second thing I'm focusing is on leading my team. How do I develop my team? And you know, I'm super big on this because if I make them big, that's massive leverage. If I import into Salome, then Salom Importance and a hundred other team members and we can scale. And the third one is how do I pour into my clients? Because I'm only as successful as my clients. So I know those are my three buckets. And if I'm not spending 80% of my time on one of those three things, then it's a failure. And so I have what's called an ideal calendar. And my assistant and I. You don't need an assistant to do this, by the way. You just build an ideal calendar of where if you were to do this, like, follow this calendar for the next 12 weeks, there's no way you don't hit those goals.

Wow.

Right? And then you layer on top your real calendar and every week you do a time audit and you say, okay, what percentage of my ideal calendar is my actual calendar? And if it's below 75%, you then have to say, okay, what do I need to change? And if it's above high five, because if you did that for 12 weeks, there's no way you can fail.

Wow. Okay, this seems like very, very organized. Have you ever noticed that you have taken this mindset and it's kind of creeped into your personal life? Like, like, is this how you plan vacations too? I want to know, like, does your wife ever get annoyed with this or does she love it?

No. So this goes into my personal life, but I understand the roles of what I. So I. This does go into my personal life. My wife has learned to live with it. My friends are upset sometimes because they're like, what do you mean? You have a networking tracker that reminds you when to text me.

Like, oh, no, you didn't text me because you missed me.

I'm like, well, if I don't text you, you don't text. Or my really close friends, If I get a text from your assistant scheduling dinner on a double date, I'm not going. I'm like, okay, then don't show up. Like, right. Like, I don't know what to tell you. Like, it does in some areas, but, like, I don't plan our vacation. Like, I let my wife be the boss of that. To be honest, I love work. So I don't. Like, if it wasn't my wife planning the vacation, I wouldn't go. Like, I would go, but it's because she plans it. So, like, we're going to Cancun next week. I didn't even book a flight. Like, it's on my calendar. So, like, I get a calendar invite, and that's like, my assistant checks my email. She saws the. She sees that it was booked. She puts it on my account. I don't know what time the fly leaves. I just know that it's there. Right?

I love that. That is so awesome. I love that you empower people who are great at things that you're not so great at and you're not such a control freak. That is something that I am still learning. I used to be of the mindset, if I want something done right, I need to do it myself. But I'm learning that that's not right. And you have brought some wonderful people to my team, Sarah included. And she. I'm learning what she's good at. Like, she's awesome in Canva, and I am so ready to let that one go. She's so good at it. And I'm like, now part of my day is freed up because I've empowered somebody who's an expert to do the thing that I'm not necessarily an expert at. So did that take time for you to learn how to let go?

I think it goes back to leadership. I think for me, I've always seen the importance of leadership. It's one of those skills that I've developed. Like, I could tell you, Ali, I suck at 99.9% of things. Right? But I Think building relationships I'm really good at. And like so people and then leadership, like, how do I treat people the way I wish I want to be treated? And how do. Because this is what my company is all about. It's like opting stands for opportunity. How do I open a world of opportunity? So for me that's always been something I enjoy. Like again, leadership is one of my big rocks. Me, I will never think of me training my team as a bad idea or a bad task. And if you think I charge, I'm not cheap, I'm not a cheap coach. So like I charge a lot for my time and I know that I can go get paid to work with a client on a one hour or I can use that time to train my employer where I'm actually paying them. And I see those things as both valuable and both equally as valuable. And so because of that, no, I just pour into my team and they make my life easier. And it just creates a win, win cycle. Like just the more I make Salome Laura Samuel Mari better, the more I now free up my time and they made my life better because they're working on my business.

Yeah, I love that. It's like a feedback loop that grows and grows. That's awesome. And your team, a lot of your team is in Columbia, right?

Yep.

So tell me about, is it called a finca? Yeah, tell me about. Yeah, so. So tell me about this, this property and your horses. I want to know like, you know, I used to have big horseback riding career. I hope to make it down someday. Tell me like how'd you get started with horses? What is your, what is your estate like down there?

So remember I mentioned in the beginning of the episode that I was born in a rich family and third generation family business that went bankrupt. And one of those things that's been in our family for over 117 years is this house, this estate. And my great grandfather left it to my grandma who was the oldest of it. And it was massive before and they separated into the five brothers and sisters. But they gave the house where the estate was to my grandma because she was a hierarchy like, like the oldest and like kind of like the motherly figure. My grandma had three kids, my dad, an uncle and my aunt. My uncle died when he was really young in a motorcycle. I never met him. Right. My dad died when he was 35, when I was three years old and then my aunt. And so when my grandparents died about six years ago, that at stake was left to me and me and my Aunt. And so we share it. And there used to be a stable there because my dad used to have horses when he was alive. And my mom used to tell me that every weekend he would take me, he would go horse bike riding. He would take me, he would take it. He would go his three horses and they would go horseback riding every weekend. And they would always be. And every time I come back, I was already asleep and I was like asleep on his arm. And I don't know, I just think I've always loved him. I always went horseback riding. And for my fifth year anniversary of opny, I just bought three horses and I just remodeled the house and the stable. And I, I go every time I go. It's. It's the most emotional purchase in my life because if I ride those horses 10 times a year, it's a lot. Yet they're not cheap to me. They eat a lot. I don't know, they're.

They eat a lot. They poop a lot. Yeah.

Wow.

How cool. So do you have trails by your house? Where do you go?

Yeah, we found some. We now find a, like, like a bar slash restaurant on the top of a mountain. Like, because it's all in the mountains, so it's like an hour. So we make, go eat, get drinks. And then in Colombia is super common to horseback ride drinking. So it's not like, I know you did it as a sport. It's all fancy and stuff like that. They have that. But like the horse bike riding that I'm talking about is called Cao el Gata. And you, you get some fire water, which is called aguardiente. You, you, you have a speaker and you go with your friends and you just ride. You don't have to gallop a lot and just ride. And then you stop in places, drinks. Yeah, like, like think about bar hopping on a horse. And horses are smart and they'll walk back home no matter where you put them. And so most of the time, even take a little bit of too many drinks. You, you, you make it home.

I'll get you back. How incredible. How incredible.

I love to come.

So you have to go like 100% we are. Tell us when and where, we'll be there.

I have my calendar plan for the rest of the year. I'm going four more times. I'll send it to you. And whenever you guys want to come, you just, just, just come. You can go. We can go to the co working space on Wednesday. You can see Sarah. It'd be awesome.

Yes. Oh my God. I'd love to. I've never been to Columbia, but I heard it's. It's definitely on my bucket list. I've heard it's an amazing place.

Oh, you'll love it. You'll love it.

How cool. Well, I could spend hours asking you questions. Maybe we should even do a part two. But this has been really incredible hearing your story. Thank you so much for sharing all of that with me. It sounds like you've been on an incredible journey. And, I mean, if you're like me, these important things happen in your life, and they may be devastating at the time, and they change the course of your life, but it turns out to be such a beautiful story. And I'm happy to have heard your story, and it makes sense where you came from and where you are now, and it's super inspirational. So thank you so much for joining us. You have an incredible story. You're making a huge impact in my life, too. So I'm just glad to know you and I appreciate you being on here.

Ali. Thanks for having me. You are awesome, and I'm happy to know you, and I'm really glad that you Enrico in my life.

Cool. Well, here's to our trip to Columbia. May the beer be strong and the horses be fast.

There you go.

Cool. All right, well, maybe we'll do a part two, because now I have even more questions for you, but I'll write them down and, yeah, we'll talk about.

It whenever you want, whenever you love it.

All right, well, thanks. We'll catch you. Catch you at the next coaching call. Bye.

Bye.