#awinewith Carolina Jimenez
MEET Carolina Jimenez, Founder of CARA PR
You can find them here:
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:00):
You are listening to Spark TV, where we bring you daily interviews with real women in business at all stages. I'm your host, Danielle Lewis, and I am so grateful to have you here. Amazing. Carolina, welcome to Spark tv. It's so good to have you here.
Carolina Jimenez (00:15):
Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be here. I'm very excited.
Danielle Lewis (00:20):
I'm just so jealous of your regal chair. So I am taking this as the inspiration that I needed to get rid of this crap office chair vibe and get into this gorgeous setting like the queen. You are.
Carolina Jimenez (00:34):
Thank you. And that was the whole entire point of having a regal chair. I just thought whenever I sit down to work, I just want to feel in my power. I want to feel like the strong, powerful, clean energy and embrace that throughout everything that I do, because that's the goal of CPR.
Danielle Lewis (00:55):
Oh my gosh, I love that so much. So let's get started by telling everyone who you are and what you do.
Carolina Jimenez (01:03):
Okay. Who am I? Oh, I am this crazy woman who loves the challenge and have just absolutely reveled in the face of adversity over so many different areas of my life. And in going through this journey of overcoming myself, imposter syndrome, and all of the other challenges life has thrown at me, I have realized that actually I'm really good at this. I'm really good at overcoming the hero's journey, and I really just wanted to tap into that through all of the experiences that I've had in different industries and bring that to women first. But to businesses who they might be really good at a particular type of thing, but marketing or PR or just putting their name out there is not their strong point. Maybe they just feel a bit sort of insecure or a bit insensitive. They're suffering from that imposter syndrome. I'm here to be that powerhouse for them and help them to unleash their brand into a community of people who love and are really yearning to find someone who has their vibe. I think it can be really scary overcoming yourself as well as overcoming the barriers between you and your business and your audience and people who are just so similar to you it would seem. But just really helping people to define who they are and to speak their truth in a way that's powerful and engaging and just really honoring the strength and the power that they have.
Danielle Lewis (02:49):
Oh my God, I feel like everyone needs you on their team, especially women. We do really have a hard time talking about ourselves and telling the world how amazing we are sometimes. Why the heck is this? So
Carolina Jimenez (03:06):
I feel like it starts off with, well, you talk about, well, everybody knows about toxic masculinity, but I feel like there's a lot of toxic femininity that people don't talk about as
Danielle Lewis (03:22):
Well. Yes. Oh my God, I could not agree with you more. Yes.
Carolina Jimenez (03:25):
So I'm working on a podcast of my own called Girl Code, and it's all about really touching back in with what it means to be a woman, what it means to be the sisterhood and raising each other up instead of pulling each other down. I feel like with media, which is wonderful for business, but it's also very much puts people on this pedestal where they feel like they constantly have to exude this level of perfectionism, which is not humanly viable. It's great for business to establish a level of expectation that you can bring as a brand, but I think people have this disconnect with like, okay, well on the outside world I need to be perceived as this particular type of thing, but who I am as a person shouldn't necessarily be altered by that. And I think it's just one of the challenges of understanding where social media fits in all of our lives and in our business, but not letting what is portrayed by the media affect who we are and turn us against each other.
Danielle Lewis (04:38):
Oh my God, I love you for saying that because it just drives me up the wall about, because it's everywhere. We always cutting women down, whether it be the way they look, what they're doing, what their vision is, what they're aiming for,
Carolina Jimenez (04:56):
What they bloody, the nails, their heels, the brand they're wearing or being overweight or whatever. There's so much of it and it's not all our fault. I think I remember even just with my mom who's a devout Catholic, she was always very much poor people and rich people and fat people and skinny people. And I think it's generations of just misinformed and not really connecting with what's the most important thing about us, which is who we are and how we love other people and how we bring them off and how we bring them together. And it's something that we need to work on as women.
Danielle Lewis (05:46):
Yeah, I love that. And I think it's just so important as well because I feel like all of that junk does hold us back. Women often have really impact driven businesses, and we let all of that noise hold us back from putting ourselves out there and thus not solving the problem that we're trying to solve in the world.
Carolina Jimenez (06:11):
I mean, as I said, I've been fighting my own, I suppose, imposter syndrome for years now. I built my own website, and I'm not a website builder, but I was just like, you know what? I'm not going to let anything get in my way. I'm going to do this. I'm going to learn on the fly, and I'm really, really proud of what I've done.
(06:30):
However, I have, it's been a big challenge to get over myself in terms of the perfectionism that I wanted because of obviously the face that I showed the world. I wanted people to look at my site and look at what I do and go, yes, this looks really professional and have that trust, but it's everywhere. We are always, I think we're our own worst critic. We're holding ourselves to such a high standard that sometimes it really stops us from moving forward. And I think being beautiful, being a good mom, being as good as your peers, being the one that gets that promotion, there's just so much of these external pressures and I think it's really important for us as women to stick together and help each other to cut through the bullshit and just own our worth and own our capability.
Danielle Lewis (07:28):
Oh my God, I love it so much. So how did you even get into this? How did this all start?
Carolina Jimenez (07:34):
Yeah, so I've worked all my life around sales, marketing events, business developments and partnerships with scale up businesses, multinational businesses, and I guess the biggest thing that I learned, especially working with multinationals like Salesforce for example, is that brand and culture is everything, and that you have to really be in touch with the people that you're serving. It's just really sent me on this journey of really understanding marketing publicity, developing a really well polished product that can then be sold to investors or that people want to buy into. So I suppose it's just lots of different influences from startup scale up, multinational, just sort of really giving me this incentive to help more people to deliver a more polished product that other people connect with, because I think it's really easy to get lost between marketing and sales and all of the social media stuff.
(09:00):
And I felt that there was a space for someone who could have the knowledge from all those industries and bring it into one concise offering that allows them to not have to wear all the hats. I think that's the other thing. As women and as entrepreneurs, you feel like you have to know something about everything, and I think if we can just give ourselves a break a little bit and instead harness that strength and that wisdom from other people in your tribe. So that's how it all started for me. I just saw so many businesses getting, they had these incredible ideas. They wanted to take it to market, they wanted to get investment in it, but they didn't really come across in the right way for people to really pick up on it and feel, I suppose, empowered and excited about investing in that opportunity.
(10:02):
And I think that's when you're a startup, when you're a scale up, that's really hard. If you don't know everything about branding, if you don't know about brand strategy, you're just kind of like, okay, well, I have a logo, I have a website and let's do it. But they forget about the depth, which is brand being the reason why people want to invest in something like that. It's not necessarily the product, it's about the feeling that they have. It's the relationship that they have and the way in which someone pulls them into their story. And I just am so passionate about helping people to do that.
Danielle Lewis (10:43):
Oh my god, I love it so much. It is really interesting. So right, I feel like it's almost like when people start a business, they have this checklist in their head, like logo, website, social, but they just forget about, they kind of start it on this mission, but then they just start to go through this arbitrary checklist and forget about that brand piece. So I love that you mentioned that because it's just so important. You're right. It is the thing that really sets us apart and gets other people onto our journey and on this path that we're all trying to travel.
Carolina Jimenez (11:17):
Totally, totally. And I mean, at the end of the day, I think it's very much like it takes a village to raise the child, and I think it takes a village and a tribe to really raise your business and your brand. So that's my biggest thing. Find your tribe, connect with your people, understand what they need, and give that to them through just really honing down on what it is that you're here to do and what it is that they need
Danielle Lewis (11:49):
Through Google. I love that. So right, we do wear all of these different hats and we can't do it all. We can't be expected to be the best at every facet of our business. So I love that you want to champion these people that are doing amazing things. If somebody came to you and they were like, oh my God, where do I even begin? What is the process that you would go through with a startup or a brand that was feeling a bit stuck?
Carolina Jimenez (12:18):
Yeah, that's a good question. So the first thing about car PR is that everything starts with a strategy. So it's all about brand strategy and then how to publicize that using pr. So the first thing that we would do is we would pretty much go into a discovery mode like an investigator. We would look at all the different areas of their brand, the touchpoints between their customers, their competitors, and just really analyze everything from an outside point of view and from an inside point of view going out just so that we understand if what they're saying they are is the same thing as what their audience or their customers believe that they are. And just find those inconsistencies. And from that just really then investigating their competitors because there is a huge amount of businesses that go out and they do their thing and they're doing great, but what they're missing out on in their business is this little piece where they are understanding or they're not understanding what it is that their competitors aren't giving their customers.
(13:44):
And in that little area there gives them a new opportunity on how they position themselves, what their messaging is, and why someone would choose them over someone that looks just like them. So the first part is definitely the discovery, understanding the full landscape of the things that you do great, the things that you do terribly, and then that of your competitors, where the key golden nuggets of wisdom lie in how you can become the person that you are always meant to be in terms of your brand and your business, and why it's so much better than someone who would seemingly do the same thing that you do.
Danielle Lewis (14:25):
I love that. I feel like sometimes women especially, but businesses do have a hard time articulating why them, exactly what you just said. Why would somebody choose you over somebody else? And having someone come in and go through that process and really help you refine it, I think is so important. I think a lot of times when I talk to women in business and I'm like, what do you do? They just go on this 30 minute rant about everything. I'm like, no, one sentence. What's the thing that makes you different? Why would I choose you? But I think if you don't have that strategic analytical marketing brain, it is really hard to get there.
Carolina Jimenez (15:06):
Yeah. And I suppose at the end of the day, through feeling that, I suppose strength and support, it allows us to focus on things that we are good at and then rely on other tribe members to come in and to help you with the things that you are not as good in that same raising a child, using the village type of thing. If your strongest point is being an accountant, being an accountant, and let your tribe help you to do the other things that you are not as good as, because I mean, at the end of the day, you're just going to waste time and energy and loose steam trying to figure out all this other stuff just to save yourself money and supposedly time, but it actually ends up working the other way. If you don't, you're not an expert. I won't try and do Google ads myself.
(16:07):
I dunno anything about it. I mean, I know how to create ads, but I'm not going to sit there and be the campaign manager for it simply because I just don't know how to do it well enough. Whereas someone else could knock it over in five minutes. But understandably, when you're starting a business or when you're scaling it, there are points where you do have to do extra things yourself because you don't have the finances to pay somebody else to do it. But this is another area that I'm really strong in car PR, is that I help people with collaborative partnerships and strategic alliances so that they can essentially have a win-win supporting another business and having that business support them as well.
Danielle Lewis (16:52):
Wow, I love that. It is really interesting. I mean, we've talked a lot about collaboration, partnerships, finding your tribe. It is just so true, and it is really interesting. One of my girlfriends talks about partnerships a lot, Jess, she had calva in a past life, and she always talks about the stats around partnerships and how there's so much stronger, you get such better ROI from a marketing point of view. So I love that you are infusing strategic partnerships into all facets of business and figuring out how you can bring people together to have those business outcomes. I just think that's so incredibly smart, not only for your business, but for all of the businesses you support.
Carolina Jimenez (17:39):
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, people, I think once they get their head around it, really realize just how powerful it is for their business in terms of getting their message out there, strengthening the perception of who they are as a brand. When I was working with a client recently in the wedding industry, I ended up getting him $20,000 in partnerships, which then just grew phenomenally how far his marketing could reach. It just grew because he tapped into their networks, they were tapped into his networks, they got together for this huge video shoot, and it just ended up blowing up massively. And it's something that can be done easily, but I think just women need to accept that we can't do everything. We shouldn't have to do everything. We are not here to struggle alone. There's so many people out there that can help that would love to help. And I think it's tapping into these tribes and communities of women who are passionate about helping other women as well and just supporting each other in our strengths.
Danielle Lewis (18:59):
So good. I love it. Now let's talk challenges. So over your time in business, and I mean even before we hit record today, we talked about having to have hard conversations with people. I'm interested in what's been some of the bigger challenges that you've had to overcome in business over the years?
Carolina Jimenez (19:18):
Yeah, I think the biggest challenge that I've had to overcome was probably divorce. Oh, no. Yes. My ex-partner and I had a product design business before Carra pr before I started Carra pr. And so I did a lot of business development. I've got a lot of clients. I did all the discovery, and then having left the relationship and the company being in his name, he got to keep all of that, and that was fine. But I think now, knowing what I know, I would've been a lot more open and I would urge people to really, it's expensive obviously, to get a formal contractual agreement between business partners and in a company, and particularly if you're family, but it's worth every dollar. So I think that would be the biggest key takeaway that I had, because at the end of the day, he got to keep all of the glory and all of my hard work, and I had to move on and start again from scratch. But at the end of the day, I wasn't really starting from scratch because I already had all the knowledge. I already had all the experience, but it was just my pride that I had to walk away. And
Danielle Lewis (20:49):
It's so hard though. I mean, I am glad that you talk about it, even though it's annoying to reflect on sometimes. It is just such a really good point. So I was, my previous business I was in with a previous partner. We were together for 10 years, not married, but after 10 bloody years, it's about the same, trying to get out of it and literally still to this day. So he hasn't been in the business since, oh my God, I want to say 2020 has since passed away, and I literally got a phone call last week from, I did a rant podcast about this last week. I literally got a call from the department of whoever, and he'd racked up $6,000 in traffic fines that were in the company name that I now have to pay you still, it's just you go into these partnerships sometimes thinking, I love them. It's all roses, and you really got to look after yourself.
Carolina Jimenez (21:52):
The most important thing is to protect yourself. I think don't wait and hope and pray and assume that everybody out there is a nice person that's going to do the right thing by you, just because your relationship's good. Now, you've got to just be professional in that way. So yeah, that would be my biggest takeaway is to invest in the legal side of it to protect yourself. Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (22:17):
Yeah. I do love you said it because it's not romantic and it's not gorgeous, but it's so important for women to look after themselves. I think that that's such a, we always talk about things like super and when women go on maternity leave and then the gender pay gap and all of this stuff. But I mean, a lot of that kind of feels corporate related. I think that in business, we do have to put those things in place to protect ourselves as well.
Carolina Jimenez (22:45):
Yeah. Yeah. So it just comes back down to that getting your time together of good people. You need a good advisor. You need a good legal person. You need a good accountant. Don't try and do everything yourself and don't try and struggle. There's always going to be somewhere, somehow someone who's willing to help you get to that next stage. I think that's a really important thing to remind people instead of feeling the overwhelm and just drowning in it, just going, oh my God, I've got to do this and I've got to do that. Just take a breath, write a bit of a plan, and go to your network or come to someone like me who has a huge network that can help you to find the right people to help you get to where you need to be. I think that's really important.
Danielle Lewis (23:35):
Oh my God, I love it. I could talk to you all day, but I always love to wrap up these podcasts with one last piece of advice. So reflecting on your time in business, what would be a piece of advice that you would give to another woman on her business journey?
Carolina Jimenez (23:54):
There were one piece of advice that I would give to another woman from my business journey would to find your tribe. I'm just so big on finding your tribe because at the end of the day, business can feel very isolating. It can feel very overwhelming, and I think that it's very easy to just work away day by day on your keyboard and get just so disconnected from the outside world because pushing so hard to get to somewhere. But when you're in a tribe of women or of other entrepreneurs, you get insight that is so invaluable to your business. They feed you and you can feed them in different ways. I was on your Spark virtual coffee meeting the other day, and someone was talking, she was talking about training your little gems in Gemini, and I was like, oh my God, I didn't know you could do that.
(25:15):
But again, if you just go into yourself and you're typing away every day and not pushing yourself to go out and find a tribe and meet different women and different business owners, and just keep yourself open to life, instead of locking yourself away, trying to push through, you just find out this incredible information that you didn't even know was a thing. So that's my biggest piece of advice is find a tribe. Find your tribe. And it's not always easy, I don't think. You always straight away find the people who are best aligned to you, but you can take one from here and take one from there, and another one from there and build your own one. I don't think there's any right or wrong, but the most important thing is just to build your tribe of supporters that are going to be there when you're having a good day. And when you're having a bad day,
Danielle Lewis (26:14):
Oh my God, I could not agree with you more. You are absolutely incredible. Carolina, thank you so much for sharing your time and your journey and your wisdom. It's been absolutely phenomenal.
Carolina Jimenez (26:27):
Thank you very much, Danielle. It's been lovely to have this opportunity to chat with you and your crew. So have an amazing day.
Danielle Lewis (26:37):
That wraps another episode of Spark tv. Shout out to Spark TV sponsor IP Australia for their amazing support of the Spark Podcast and women in business. And if no one tells you today, you've got this.
✨ Thank you to IP Australia for supporting the SPARK podcast and women in business ✨
