#awinewith Valeria Ramirez
MEET Valeria
Valeria is the Founder of Valeria Ramirez Visuals.
Find Valeria here:
Valeria Ramirez Visuals website or Instagram @valeriaramirezvisuals.
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:07):
Valeria, welcome to Spark tv. I'm so excited to have you.
Valeria Ramirez (00:12):
So excited to be here. So good to see you. It's been a
Danielle Lewis (00:14):
While. I know. Well, most people won't know that we actually went to high school together, so we've known each other on and off for, I don't even know how old we are. Decades. How
Valeria Ramirez (00:26):
Old? Well, we just had our 20 year reunion. Oh my
Danielle Lewis (00:28):
God. That's insane, isn't it? The time has gone so quickly and I didn't actually go, so I'm over in wa, so I didn't get to go to the reunion this year, but God, I can imagine that people's lives have just gone through so much over the last 20 years.
Valeria Ramirez (00:47):
It's hard to even, I don't know. It doesn't feel like it's been 20 years, so
Danielle Lewis (00:52):
It doesn't, I still feel like a baby, this gray hair in these wrinkles. I don't know what they're doing, but
Valeria Ramirez (00:57):
It's not me. My 20,
Danielle Lewis (00:59):
Yeah, I still feel like I can go clubbing. I do not have the energy. I have a giant cup of coffee here to try and stay sane. Oh my God. So let's talk about you. So we're not here to talk about us. Let's talk about you, because obviously we have known each other for so long. So I've seen your career and your business journey just go from strength to strength. So I want to share that with the Spark community. So let's talk on what you do now and then we'll get a bit of a backstory.
Valeria Ramirez (01:29):
Yes. So now I'm a full-time photographer. I do a lot of commercial portraiture, some family sort of stuff, and a lot of food photography, and wasn't always a photographer. I started my career as a journalist, fresh out of high school, went into uni, did journalism, worked at a p Brisbane News, Korea mail, then down in Tassie. Then decided when I moved to Melbourne to start my own online magazine. So then had that for a while and I think, what was I, 2021, the content production, the magazine, editing the articles, managing, I think had 23 writers at the time.
Danielle Lewis (02:13):
Holy crap.
Valeria Ramirez (02:14):
Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (02:15):
Oh my God.
Valeria Ramirez (02:16):
Yeah. Writers and all sorts of people. And it's funny actually to see where some of the people that I used to work with have ended up one of them, Adam, head of gq, and then Ryan. You always see him on Instagram. He's got this other girl and they do a radio thing in Melbourne. Oh, not
Danielle Lewis (02:37):
The funny guys's best
Valeria Ramirez (02:44):
Big things that you could say around Christmas and also in the bedroom. Yeah. I was like,
Danielle Lewis (02:50):
He's so good. I love him.
Valeria Ramirez (02:53):
So I did that and then started getting my first taste of burnout and all the wonderful things that you experience as an entrepreneur and running your own business. And from there on my career, I guess kind of evolved. So I had to fold the business at some point because it was a lot. It was a lot of work. It was the editing, but then you also have to sell ads to pay all the staff that you've got, and it was just a bit much. So then I had my health issues that resulted as a result of all of the stress, and I took a year off. I ended up working at Lululemon, and then I discovered goal setting. I discovered all this personal development work. I was like, this is amazing. I was into yoga and that started my health journey, which eventually created the wellness, which was my online blog that I had for many, many years. I did personal training and holistic health coaching, nutrition, all that sort of stuff under that umbrella and was a bit of an influencer, I guess you could say. You're
Danielle Lewis (04:03):
Totally an influencer. I know it's a bad word. I like content creative better these days.
Valeria Ramirez (04:09):
Yeah, that was me, one of the original kind of health. You were
Danielle Lewis (04:14):
One of the OGs. Yeah, absolutely.
Valeria Ramirez (04:17):
And that was an interesting journey and developing that and learning all the skills that I had in that space. I got into the digital marketing space. I had a little side, I guess digital marketing agency. We managed other people's accounts and all that stuff. So social media marketing did that. I had a couple of people that worked across both businesses, which was fun and come, I then completely reinvented myself again because it just didn't feel like the right space for me to be in at the time. I wasn't very feeling fulfilled or satisfied, and I worked with a business coach. I actually was ready to go. You actually know the person that I'm talking about, cigarette. We were going to go drive trucks and mines, I was so over everything. I was like, drive some trucks in the mines.
Danielle Lewis (05:15):
It's a great life choice. If I
Valeria Ramirez (05:17):
Could start a YouTube channel, it'd be funny.
Danielle Lewis (05:20):
Totally. We need more mining influences. I'm not going to lie.
Valeria Ramirez (05:24):
I'm like, I could rock some high.
(05:27):
And then my mom's like, well, why don't you go see a bit of a business coach? Sounds like you're having a bit of a life crisis. I don't know what part of your life you're at, but go see this business coach, and if you still want to drive trucks after that, I'll fully support you. So I saw this business coach and we kind of delved into what makes me happy and what lights me up. And photography was always one of those things, which I actually picked up by having a blog. And she's like, you're going to be an artist going to, you're going to be a photographer. So we set a goal to do an exhibition, and I did it and just carried on from there.
Danielle Lewis (06:06):
Oh my God, that is incredible. And I love as well that you just said the word, I reinvented myself again, and I'm like, I feel like as female founders or women entrepreneurs or whatever we want to call ourselves, we get so stuck in, well, this is kind of what I told everybody that I'm doing, so I just have to make it work. But you don't have to. You can actually take a step back and reevaluate things and life does change and your priorities change.
Valeria Ramirez (06:34):
Absolutely. Absolutely. And in between all of the career choices, I've become a different person. I became a mother, I was a wife, I went through divorce and all of those things shape you, shape your life, shape your lifestyle. And I feel like a lot of these things, these mega milestones in my life also impacted my career because I had to make my career work around my life. I couldn't have a nine to five job because my now ex-husband traveled quite a fair bit. So the demand on looking after my son the way I wanted to just meant that there was no point in me working a full-time job, and it never felt like the right thing for me. I did it while I was a journalist, but I always felt stuck. I always felt claustrophobic. We talk about a DHD and entrepreneurialism now of course, and I'm like, I'm pretty sure I had a bit of that.
Danielle Lewis (07:31):
I think the best of us do I run with all of us business owners.
(07:38):
Oh, so good. And so what was it like? I mean, I guess it's quite easy on the surface to say saw a business coach asked myself some questions, reinvented my whole life, but surely it wasn't that easy. Surely the process of actually reflecting and thinking and understanding what it was that light you up sometimes I don't think we all know. I think you could ask me, Danielle, what lights you up? And I'd be like, not quite sure. But so I think the process of actually delving into that would be emotionally difficult. And then the process of starting a new business and figuring out what that looks like would be difficult as well. What was the whole process of the change?
Valeria Ramirez (08:20):
I guess because I don't know, I've always kind of reinvented myself, but for me, the reinvention and rebirth process is a big part of who I'm, for some reason. I
Danielle Lewis (08:33):
Love that. I love it.
Valeria Ramirez (08:34):
I moved to Australia from Russia in nine four, so that was a complete identity change. Then obviously being a teenager, you start finding yourself, and then I changed high schools and then that was a reinvention thing. So the process of letting go of an identity and becoming something else or someone else wasn't that scary for me because I'd done it in different ways previously. So if something wasn't working, I knew that at any point I'm going to be like, you know what? I've survived that. I'm going to be okay.
Danielle Lewis (09:09):
Totally.
Valeria Ramirez (09:10):
But career-wise, especially moving from being, I guess someone with a bit of a following, it took me a really long time to let that go. And I'd been sitting on it for a while, especially after I'd sold the business, but I kept the followers. I really struggled with letting go of that need to show up and to teach and to educate people. And it was exhausting. It was really exhausting. And there was a point where I just went, what am I even teaching people? I have zero interest in teaching and I don't want to share the nitty gritty in and outs of my personal life. So I'm like, I'm just going to let it go. And I did, and it was amazing.
Danielle Lewis (09:53):
Well, and that's like I was saying as I was thinking about talking to you today, I remember seeing your post where you were like, Hey, I'm not going to be on this account anymore. Come follow me at it's Valeria visuals now
Valeria Ramirez (10:08):
Premier's visuals. Yeah.
Danielle Lewis (10:10):
And so I was like, oh my God, this is something that you've spent years building, right, years building. And I guess from the outside, there's lots of people who go, oh, they struggle to get followers and they're in the trenches every day. And I was like, I can imagine. Yeah, actually, actually ripping the bandaid off and saying, I'm letting this go, but doing it. I think if I said, I'm letting this go for something I was working on, no one would notice, but you've got thousands of followers that you're announcing it to. So how did that feel?
Valeria Ramirez (10:44):
It was scary, to be honest. But then I'm like, I don't really own these people, so you have to detach. And it was difficult because I'd shared so much of my personal life for such a long time, and people had watched my son be born, grow up everything he ate, all the recipes that I developed as a wasn't having him. My life was on a public platform for such a long time and living like that where you're constantly, this was a lifestyle to then switch gears and not need to record everything you eat or everywhere you go and actually be there and enjoy. That was really refreshing. What's that?
Danielle Lewis (11:31):
It
Valeria Ramirez (11:31):
Was refreshing, but then I'm like, I stopped taking photos. I stopped because when you have an Instagram account, you take it at least for the gram, but then I'm like, I really should have taken a photo.
Danielle Lewis (11:41):
Where are those memories in my head anymore?
Valeria Ramirez (11:45):
Have to remember it. What?
Danielle Lewis (11:48):
Oh my God. Using my brain does not compute
Valeria Ramirez (11:52):
Of death. Just going and going and going, oh
Danielle Lewis (11:54):
My God. Totally. That's what the coffee is for. No, I love that too because I think that we do put a lot of pressure on ourselves to show up for our audiences, but I love that you just said you don't own those people. And to be fair, if someone has 10,000 followers or 20,000 or a hundred thousand, whatever, it's not like they're all their customers that they're suddenly going, I'm no longer supporting you or servicing you. So you do have to detach a little bit from the fact that people are potentially following hundreds if not thousands of people online and that yes, you were very important to them, but you don't then have to beholden your whole life to showing up for those people.
Valeria Ramirez (12:38):
No, no. And I think a lot of people do get stuck in that. They feel like they owe it to someone. But to be honest, if you kind of switched off for a little while, at some point people do move on. They do. I did get messages for a while saying, oh, I miss all your positivity and all of your little inspiring messages and stuff, and I'm like, well, I'm inspiring myself now. You go be that for yourself too.
Danielle Lewis (13:02):
Yes. Oh my God. You're actually empowering everyone to do it for
Valeria Ramirez (13:05):
Themselves. I'm empowering you. Be free and
Danielle Lewis (13:09):
Go live your life. I love that.
Valeria Ramirez (13:12):
On that point of go live your life. I do remember, especially when I was in the health and wellness space, a lot of women would reach out to me and say, oh, because I make all these healthy things, but that was my life. That was my lifestyle. That was something that was really important to me. But then I'd have all these moms and be like, oh, I look at your life. And they ended up feeling bad about themselves because they don't cook like that, or their kids won't eat like that, or they're going on holidays like that. And I'm like, I'm enabling this. And people feeling less about themselves looking at my life, it just made me feel bad.
Danielle Lewis (13:52):
Isn't that funny? You are showing up trying to tell people how to live a healthy life, and you're feeling bad about it, feeling
Valeria Ramirez (13:58):
Bad about it. I'm like, I don't want you to feel bad. I want you to feel good. I want you to use for the days when you've got your shit together and you can make a couple of blis balls for the future. Put some in the freezer. You don't have to do this every day. I do this because I have to make content, but it doesn't.
Danielle Lewis (14:17):
And that's such an interesting lens to look at social media, all of these personalities or brands, that is their job to show up every day. We have to remember that we are just humans. We're me humans on the other side. We're looking at all of these people's lives. We don't have to take all of it and feel like a failure if we don't live that life.
Valeria Ramirez (14:40):
Exactly, exactly. This is their job. It is their channel, it's their platform. They're showing up every day and they have the news. They have to produce something every day.
Danielle Lewis (14:52):
Yeah. Oh my God. Yes. It's a hamster wheel. The hamster wheel. So what was it like for you going from, so journalism, nine to five career, then you took the leap into running your own business. What was the learning curve going from working from somebody for somebody else to working for yourself?
Valeria Ramirez (15:11):
You learn a lot. You learn a lot when you have to work for yourself. Because being a young, naive journalist that came in wrote their, how many words I had to write, punch ticket, essentially go to all the glamorous parties and whatnot. It was completely different to then running your own business because you very quickly learn. It's not just about doing exactly that. There's the accounting side of things, there's the business structure side of things, there's the legal side of things. There's all of this stuff that you don't,
Danielle Lewis (15:45):
Marketing, sales,
Valeria Ramirez (15:46):
Marketing, sales. How are you actually generating income because paying for your words, writing.
Danielle Lewis (15:54):
Damn it.
Valeria Ramirez (15:55):
So at the age of 20, this was my PhD in business very, very quickly, and I was very naive jumping into it. But being an Aries, I guess that's what we do. We're just like,
Danielle Lewis (16:12):
Oh
Valeria Ramirez (16:12):
Yeah, let's go for it. I'm going to start a, let's
Danielle Lewis (16:14):
Figure it out.
Valeria Ramirez (16:15):
Figure it out. And I guess that attitude has served me in many ways, but at the same time, I jump in headfirst and without any safety net and I'm like,
Danielle Lewis (16:27):
Well, it kind of forces you to do it quickly. I think sometimes when we have a safety net, we kind of put off the learning and kind of go, well, I'm not going to die today, so whatever. But when you're in the, oh my God, how am I going to pay my bills today? Then you kind of learn very quickly that you are in control of that whole universe
Valeria Ramirez (16:47):
And you upskill yourself tremendously. So every business venture I've had has given me a whole plethora of skills that I just would not have had to had before, and I had to learn it on the job. And I think for me, that's my best learning style is
Danielle Lewis (17:06):
Just
Valeria Ramirez (17:07):
Figuring it all out myself, seeing what works, seeing what doesn't. Everything looks scary. I remember I always wanted to do photography, but little buttons and dials on the camera.
Danielle Lewis (17:18):
It does look scary. I've had one before and I think it's collecting somewhere.
Valeria Ramirez (17:22):
I was having nightmares about it. I'm like, how am I ever going to know how to, and I remember somebody would be like, oh, just take a picture. I've done all the settings. And I'm like, oh my God. And I used to model when I was younger as well, so I've been on the other side of the lens. But coming onto this side, it was scary. And what forced me to go into it was because I was producing so many food recipes, I was constantly hiring photographers. It was getting expensive. The amount of money I'm spending on photography, I might as well buy a camera and figure it out. So that's how I started in food photography and it went on from it.
Danielle Lewis (17:59):
That is so good. I love your food photography. It is so gorgeous. And that's a question that I wanted to ask as you were talking about learning. Have you found over the years, any resources that have been amazing for you? Has it all just been Mr. Google, I've got a problem, got to figure it out? Or have there been courses or coaches? I know you mentioned a business coach. What was that process for you of actually upskilling yourself? Like
Valeria Ramirez (18:26):
Everything, every skill has been different. I remember when I was doing social media, I can't remember, there's something institute and I did a proper course through there. What was it? Social Media Institute? I can't remember. It's one of those. But you know what, domestica has been amazing.
Danielle Lewis (18:45):
Oh, cool.
Valeria Ramirez (18:46):
Domestica. And they're always on sale. So you can get a really great course from some of the world's greatest people in the specialist
Danielle Lewis (18:55):
In industry,
Valeria Ramirez (18:57):
Especially for photography and creative stuff. Domestica has been amazing. I pick up lots from there. But now we've got so much amazing free content on YouTube, on Instagram, people are constantly sharing stuff. So if there's ever, especially in the field of photography, if there's ever anything that I needed to learn in terms of lighting or to try or whatever, there's plenty of information on YouTube, on Google to give you the right answers. But for me, it's always that trial and error, trial and error, trial and error, see what works. And with stuff like creativity, it's very responsive. You can take a picture and know how to adjust it quite quickly, and you can learn about gear quite quickly. Whereas seeing what kind of ads people respond to on social media, oh
Danielle Lewis (19:51):
God, yeah, that's definitely a Do a course topics.
Valeria Ramirez (19:56):
Yes.
Danielle Lewis (19:57):
Or hire somebody,
Valeria Ramirez (19:59):
Psychology, all sorts of stuff. That's an outsource job.
Danielle Lewis (20:02):
Yeah, absolutely. Well, and that's interesting too. So you mentioned having, what was it, 15, 20, 23, did you say writers?
Valeria Ramirez (20:10):
23 minions that worked for me.
Danielle Lewis (20:13):
It sounds like my worst nightmare. What was that like? And obviously you've had the transition right from being maybe a solo opener to then having a huge team to then maybe coming back. What was it like managing people and any advice on A lot of people who listen to this podcast are super early stage and kind of in that I'm just ready to hire my first person or outsource to my first person and feeling very anxious about it.
Valeria Ramirez (20:41):
Okay, don't hire people that you are identical with. You need people triggered
Danielle Lewis (20:49):
That
Valeria Ramirez (20:50):
Are not like you, that compliment you and fill in the blanks. So if you are a creative person and you're all ideas, you don't want to hire another ideas person. You need someone do the doing stuff, so the numbers or the accounting staff or going out there and getting the leads or whatever. So make sure you look at the full spectrum of who you are, what your strengths are, what you love doing, what you don't love doing, and find people to fill in the stuff that drains your energy. And you might not be besties with them, but they're going to get the job.
Danielle Lewis (21:29):
I know. And it's hard. So that was something that I really struggled with when I was hiring staff. I wanted to get along with 'em, but I kind of think that that was a little bit naive. I think you're so right. You pick people that actually compliment you, not someone that you're going to be best friends with because at the end of the day, you kind of do have to remove the emotion out of it a little bit in business. And at the end of the day, yes, you want to have great relationships with your team, but getting the job done is probably the biggest
Valeria Ramirez (22:01):
Thing. And don't be cheap.
Danielle Lewis (22:03):
Oh my God, don't haggle with people,
Valeria Ramirez (22:06):
But you will get what you paid for. If you try to get an all rounder for your business, they're not going to get anything done and it's just chew up all of that time educating them only to be let down because the return on investment's just not going to be there for you. And you're going to get more frustrated. You're going to get frustrated with them. And ultimately that business relationship is pretty much guaranteed to fail. So also do all those tests. There's those personality tests that you can do before you hire people, find out who you are, get a really clear understanding of who you are, how you lead, whether you are a leader. That's really important to know as well, because if you're not someone that will lead and then hire accordingly to make sure that you've got all of those little gaps filled, as my mom or other people would always say as well, at the end of the day, someone has to drive the bus and there's a person for every role. Not everyone's going to be the amazing boss, entrepreneur. Someone has to take that role. Someone has to do the filing, someone has to do the printing, someone has to do the stapling, whatever.
(23:20):
All those jobs need to be filled and the right people need to be put into those positions. And if their personality doesn't work or you've got too many leaders or too many followers in one little department of your company, that's not going to work as well. So it's really important, a to know yourself and do a lot of personal inner work on yourself, read all the books. There's plenty of resources on how to lead on modern business, on all the skills that you need as a leader within a company. Make sure you do that personal work on yourself that will reflect on the team and the culture and the company that you grow ultimately.
Danielle Lewis (23:58):
I love that so much because I think as well, business owners do have a tendency to want to hold onto everything and be the person. And I could just do it so much easier and quicker myself. And we don't outsource, but you are right. Not everybody is actually good at everything. So knowing yourself and what you are really good at, great. And I think also there's a difference between what you like doing and what you're really good at. And sometimes they're different, but then knowing what your weaknesses are and not feeling bad about that, getting help in those areas, you don't have to. I feel like sometimes people make a mistake going, okay, well I'm really crap at that, so that's what I'll work on. I'm like, no, hone your strengths and what you love and outsource the crap that you're weak at.
Valeria Ramirez (24:47):
And it's that stuff, doing the stuff that actually energizes you. You're going to energize that area of your business. You're really good at talking to people. If you're really good at schmoozing, if you're really good at networking, go out and do that. If you're really good at the nitty gritty side of things, do that. If that lights you up, do that. Get other people to run the ship. A ship is not run by one single person. There's lots of jobs that need to be done on a day-to-day basis. And I think where we are now with business, we have a lot more opportunity to hire externally. And you don't have to have people on full-time, payroll. You can outsource through Upwork. You can find people to do lots of little things without having that permanent commitment, which can be really, really scary for a lot of people. So we're very lucky, especially post the Covid era in being able to run business very remotely. So use this golden era of running the business. Literally. I can run most of my stuff through my phone.
Danielle Lewis (25:55):
Oh my God, yes. And I love that point. I think people do get scared that they've got to bring on a full-time person and then kind of feed them. Right. And you're right. It's like you might have all of these little things that need to be done getting in one full-time. All rounder now means you're committed to a huge salary potentially. And then they're not great at any of the jobs that you actually need them to do. I love that you said that. We have the opportunity to outsource. There's all of these different platforms that we can leverage. Everything can be completely remote, so you can get the right person anywhere in the world to do the one little task. And
Valeria Ramirez (26:32):
You can shop around, you can shop around. You've got the global recruitment market. You can find amazing talent at a budget that works for you. I've got a couple of editors that I use because I can't sit and edit copious amounts of work when I've got a little boy that I need to look after who's being absolutely amazing at the
Danielle Lewis (26:54):
Back. I know. I'm so impressed. Yeah,
Valeria Ramirez (26:57):
There's a kelpie and a little boy out there.
Danielle Lewis (27:01):
Wow. Not week. Amazing.
Valeria Ramirez (27:05):
But I can't and can't, I'm not one of those people that is going to edit until two o'clock in the morning. Because if I do, then I know that I'm going to be rubbish at night the next day. So I'll do my shoots during the day. I come home, I'll upload everything. I'll select the images that I want. I'll send them off to Bosnia or wherever my editors happen to be
Danielle Lewis (27:25):
Perfect. And
Valeria Ramirez (27:26):
While I sleep, my work gets edited. I wake up, send it off to my client. My client thinks I haven't slept all night. Happy days.
Danielle Lewis (27:33):
You genius. Basically, you've just let everybody in on the secret that you're a genius.
Valeria Ramirez (27:40):
I do edit a lot of my creative stuff, but if it's just a lot of the content stuff that's quite easy to do, rather than do it all night, I'll sleep and let people do it in their own time.
Danielle Lewis (27:50):
I love it so much because I think that people think there's a way that they need to do things and that's not true. Find what works for you find, and I love that you said, I'll do this bit, the bit that I need to take control of, but for this stuff, that's kind of more everyday business as usual. Somebody else can manage that.
Valeria Ramirez (28:09):
And there's technology for that. So through light room, I can essentially, there'll be a hundred photos and out of those a hundred photos, there'll be a few different lighting settings. I'll edit maybe four or five photos within that entire set just to show them what I want. And then their job is to replicate it.
Danielle Lewis (28:27):
That's so good.
Valeria Ramirez (28:28):
And then there's a little link up, you send it off and it gets done. It's amazing.
Danielle Lewis (28:33):
And I guess the thing is too, you would qa, right? It would come back, you'd go, yep, that looks good. Then send it on. It's not like you are giving them the communication with the client, so you never actually have to worry that anything's going to get shipped to a client. That's not of your standard,
Valeria Ramirez (28:49):
None of that. So it comes back to me, I'll QA tweak whatever needs to be tweaked and then move on.
Danielle Lewis (28:55):
That's so good. I love that so much.
Valeria Ramirez (28:59):
Sorry, one more thing. It's really important if you have a business to make it work for you. That's the biggest takeaway. Stop looking at what other people are doing. And I think especially in the creative space, it's easy to be like, okay, well, I'm just going to kind of copy what this person's doing. That person might not have a kid, that person might not have a healthy, might not have a health condition. I had adrenal burnout for a really, really long time with a really long time to get on top of my energy levels and just knowing that I can't push, I can't train. I used to, and I used to completely trash my body because I had this idea in my head that I had to wake up at four in the morning. I had to do my journaling. I had to meditate a lot to exercise. I had to drink my, I'm like, by the time my son woke up, I've already put in a full-time, day's work. Oh
Danielle Lewis (29:52):
My God, I'm exhausted Just listening to that, what
Valeria Ramirez (29:56):
Am I doing? And it's just listening. Because I had this idea in my head of these healthy habits that I had to have. I'm like, no, I actually need sleep, so I'm going to do that.
Danielle Lewis (30:06):
Oh my God. And you're so right, goes back to we see everybody's highlight reel on social media and think, oh my God, they're so successful. Obviously I'm not doing it right because I'm not getting up at 4:00 AM I'm not journaling. I'm not doing this. So clearly I must be a failure.
Valeria Ramirez (30:23):
And it's that hustle culture that we were pushed for a long time. I know Tony Robbins and whatnot are doing amazing things, but you have to come back to you and as women men have a 24 hour hormone cycle, it's testosterone first thing in the morning, that kind of way of waking up and going for it works for them. We have our 24 hour cycle, then we've got four different cycles within the month. And where we are within that is going to determine how our energy is. And you can't drive yourself like that 24 7 and then feel like a failure when the body's just not geared for it. There are times in the month when you need to pull back and rest. So when I'm fertile, that's when I'll do most of my face work and content work and it's outward work, but the rest of the time it's just like chill back, go behind the scenes.
Danielle Lewis (31:19):
Yeah, I think you're so right. And also being flexible with yourself. I noticed that. So I've just done a big, okay, I've got to get all of these things done before the end of the year so that when I leave on the 23rd, I have no work on my plate and I can totally switch off. And yesterday I was supposed to record a whole bunch of course videos and it was day one of the cycle, and I was just like, well, I'm either going to cry. And I was like, you know what? You can do it another day this week. Don't have, if you don't do it today, a no one else is going to know the world is not going to end. So why don't you do, you've got plenty of other things on the list. Why not do some stuff that's a little bit just easier on you and your energy and show up on Friday when you've got another clear day and you'll be more energized.
Valeria Ramirez (32:10):
Just having that self-compassion is really, really important. That level of compassion and self-awareness is self care isn't just the journaling and the meditating and the yoga and all that outward stuff. Good stuff as well. And knowing that I don't have the energy to do all the things on my to-do list, so I am going to pick one or two things, just making the bed and going walk.
Danielle Lewis (32:38):
Yep. I mean, that's
Valeria Ramirez (32:39):
Me today.
Danielle Lewis (32:40):
Yep. Well, thank you for being here. I feel very honored. No, but it's really interesting as well, and I love that at the very start of the conversation, you talked about the business coach and actually asking yourself those questions. What does light you up? What I feel like that's kind of the common theme of this conversation is there's all of this perception in the world about what we should look like, should be doing, how our businesses should operate, all of the things, the shoulds. But really it comes back to asking ourselves some really important questions about how we work, what's aligned to us, what does light us up, what our energy is like, and how we want business to work for us.
Valeria Ramirez (33:23):
No, and it's really important to do the inner work. I can't stress that enough. Ever since I started my own personal development journey and all the things that I've done over the last God, many, many years, decades, even having a really good understanding of who you are, how you work, it's empowering because you're then able to set boundaries and honor your own boundaries instead of being a total people pleaser and constantly giving, giving. Because ultimately, when you do and you don't honor what's right for you, you will burn out. And I faced that wall over and over and over again in whatever business venture I took. And I used to blame it on the business. It wasn't the business. It was because I had no boundaries. And lack of boundaries came from lack of self-awareness and knowing that just because my mom worked and she's an amazing entrepreneur and business woman, she can work 80 hours a week. I have to.
Danielle Lewis (34:24):
Yeah, totally. Just because
Valeria Ramirez (34:26):
She did the kids and the work and the study and whatnot, I have to, and there were so many times in my life that I had to be like, this is not my story. This is not my life. Why am I repeat patterns that are literally gearing me up for failure?
Danielle Lewis (34:42):
Yes. And I love that you just said as well in a work and work that you have done over years and decades. This isn't like a, I'm going to read a book and be cured. This is literally that process of understanding who you are, researching, learning, changing, trying something new. This work never ends, and then your life changes again, and you've got to change it all over again.
Valeria Ramirez (35:06):
Absolutely. Absolutely. So be flexible, be fluid. And women, we are like water. You have to know that we are so fluid. We will flow with the seasons, we'll flow with our cycles, we'll flow with whatever. And we pick up on energy. And we are just these beautiful, beautiful beings. And there's so much about being a woman that we don't know, and we don't know the strength in being a woman because we have this beautiful heart and this intuition that can really, really drive us in business. And a lot of the times we've been forced to become really masculine, and there's a place in being masculine within business, but there's a power in femininity and there's a power in leading like a woman. And I feel like if we as women especially learn to understand ourselves and our own superpowers, there's so much that we can bring to the business world.
Danielle Lewis (35:59):
I love that. And look, that was my last question to you. So my last question was literally, so for anyone who is just starting out in their business and perhaps feeling like they don't know what they got themselves in for, whether you'd have any last piece of advice, would that be it? Or would there be something that you would throw into the mix,
Valeria Ramirez (36:19):
Get help, get some help, get some coaching? Honestly, invest in coaching. I know that it can be expensive and it can be scary, but the OI in getting things right the first time around is cheaper
Danielle Lewis (36:40):
Than making all the mistakes.
Valeria Ramirez (36:43):
You'll make all these mistakes and end up with a massive tax debt because you didn't get the right financial advice or you didn't have the right financial structure to set you up in the beginning. There's government options. You can get grants, you can get mentors. You can find mentors that will help you within your industry ask questions. When I got my business coach, she was really good in the spiritual side of things, which gave me a completely different understanding of business that I'd never thought about before. So she looked at the spiritual side of things, but she also looked at my Excel sheets and projecting and looking at numbers and all this sort of stuff, which are things that I didn't think about that much when I started out my business. I was more focused on the creating side of things, which is what I'm good at. But there's so much to business that you just don't know. So my biggest piece of advice would be get help, get some mentoring, ask a million questions, and get the right advice from the very, very beginning so you can set yourself up for success.
Danielle Lewis (37:45):
Incredible. Valeria, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and insights with the Spark community. I'm so grateful to reconnect with you and have you here.
Valeria Ramirez (37:55):
No, it's been wonderful. Thank you so.
