Juliana Marulanda helps agency owners build scalable businesses. She says codify every service process so the process itself becomes a product, and advocates for failing fast and failing big to generate clear lessons. She learned resourcefulness from her mother selling aguardiente in Flushing Park.
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All right, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner, and today's sponsor is Flipboard. Flipboard curates the world stories so you can be smarter in your work, life, and play. Choose from thousands of topics to personalize Flipboard and get the latest stories from the best publishers and experts delivered to you 24/7. So You can get started now at flipboard.com. And now let's jump into the episode. All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Juliana Marulanda with us and she helps agency owners from the chaos of day-to-day and help codify the business so it can scale and run without the owner. So welcome to the show.
Hi, thank you so much for having me here. I'm super stoked.
Of course, and we're grateful to have you on. So the first one we got for you is, what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
I think the best story of what Well, hopefully it's not gonna be the best story of my life, but I think my favorite story to date is my first job. And my first job, my mom had lost her job one summer and she ended up selling aguardiente in Flushing Park. And, you know, aguardiente is the national beverage of Colombia. It's also an alcoholic drink. And she was pretty stealthy. I would say, you know, we spent the whole summer you know, selling aguardiente. And she, she was dating a cop at the time. So she had like one of those get out of jail free cards. And, you know, and she just, she found, you know, there was like all these soccer players and they were playing and, and we made a ton of cash. And at the end of each night, I would like count up the money and see how we were doing. And, you know, and I was kind of like a bookkeeper, accountant, cocktail girl, got the tips and everything. And, you know, I think This was minus any labor law issues. It taught me how to be so resourceful. And my mom was just like the type of person, she was single mom, immigrant, the whole deal. And she was just incredibly resourceful and gritty. And she took something that could have been really hard times and a really difficult situation, and she just leveraged it for an incredible opportunity. You know, and I think I learned some negotiating skills too, where I used to negotiate my salary in ice cream and be able to, you know, and if we didn't make as much money as we did last week, I'd be like, hey, what's going on here? So there's just lots of skills, you know, that I learned from that summer. And it taught me a lot. And I really refer back to that sometimes where, you know, anytime anything gets hard, I'm just like, Wow, you can always leverage any situation and really see the opportunities that are there.
That is awesome. I love that story. And then the next one I got for you is, what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
I think the most valuable piece of info that I can give any, any business owner is to really codify their business, especially if you're in services Your process is your product, right? And not really thinking about productizing your services, and I don't even mean it in that way, because I know there's a lot of conversation in the industry about productizing, but really knowing what your processes are and codifying them, because something that I learned from someone that I was speaking to on a sales call— I always find sales calls so educational. Is that you can not only scale your business, but when you scale, you scale your inefficiencies as well. So really thinking about, you know, taking a proactive look in how you're growing and really where you can create things so that you're taking yourself out of them and create a business where even your decision-making, you know, can be scaled. Because you're codifying that as well.
And then it could tie in, but what's your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry specific.
Um, I had a conversation with someone recently, and it would be if you're going to fail, fail epically. Um, fail fast and fail epically. And, and the reason why I say that is because at the end of the day, you have a really good story. And if you have failed epically, there is no marginal learning. You're going to learn your lesson really, really quickly. And it also means that you're willing to take risks that others aren't willing to take. Right? And you're going to just learn and you can pivot quicker. It'll make you implement faster. and it'll just get you going so much faster than if you're being cautious throughout, you know, and I'm not saying, you know, fail epically irresponsibly, but I do mean in the sense of like, just take those risks. And when you do, just own them.
And then if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Um, it would be to find what you love as quickly as possible. In what you're doing. And, you know, whether that is, you know, I think for myself, it was like I was, you know, I think I did a lot of process of elimination and had God knows how many jobs till I found what I loved. But I would say to myself, to, you know, find what I love as quickly as possible and take all the risks, especially at a much younger age, because it's so much easier to bounce back and it's so much easier to pivot, the less responsibilities you have.
So yeah, I agree. And then kind of going a little bit down a different path here, in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
I was thinking about this before the call because there's so many, you know, I don't want to say formulas to happiness, right? Like one of the most obvious things I think about is, you know, having daily gratitude and, you know, surrounding yourself by happy people, not by unhappy people. But I don't remember where I read it, but it was something like where the key to happiness or the formula to happiness is where expectations meet reality. And I thought that was so cool. But, you know, but then from a proactive standpoint, like, how do you create those expectations? You know, and, and how do you create your reality? So I would say, being present as possible. And it was a kind of a roundabout way to say that. But I think it was just, you know, in order to be truly happy, at least for me, is, is really staying present and open.
And then what is the best book that you've read? And what was the number one thing you learned from that?
The best— I've read so many different books. What was I reading? I may have to go back here and edit, but I think it's Daily Rituals. I've been reading this book that gives you sort of these tiny, tiny little bits on different people, you know, different creative or the artists' rituals. I'm gonna have to go back to see this one. But yeah, and it talks a little bit about like every single chapter is this tiny synopsis of, you know, like Sigmund Freud and Simone de Beauvoir, and it talks about what they did in their daily lives. And it was just really interesting because a lot of them were alcoholics, which I found very fascinating. And, you know, and some of them woke up really, really early, and a lot of them did nothing during the day. They spent a lot of time thinking, and I just found it So interesting to see what these people— because I'm a productivity nerd, right? So I'm always like, how do you become successful? What are the habits? What are the productivity? And then really looking to see how there's so much different ownership in how individuals behave and what really works for you independently, that there wasn't really like no formula or no particular pattern. To see what's going to make you the most successful. So I found that book really interesting, and I'm happy to look it up and let you know afterwards exactly the title.
Yes, for sure. And then what is your favorite quote and why?
I think, and this has been my favorite quote since I was a kid, it's been like, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." And I think as an entrepreneur, That is just re-present for me on a daily basis because there's certain things that can seem scary but aren't necessarily all that big of a deal, right? Like sending your first email blast may be very similar to doing your first product launch and that feeling of like, oh my God, I can't believe it. But pressing play or send isn't going to kill you. You know, and I think it just, it really does make you stronger for when you, when you are facing true adversity.
Yes. I love it. Thank you so much for coming on. The last one I got for you is where can our audience best find you online?
Yeah, our audience, your audience can find me at scale_time.co. Also on Instagram, @scale_time. We're on Facebook and Yeah, definitely. I would love to hear from them. Ping me, you know, comment and DM me.
