The Entrepreneur's Edge: Cultivating a Mindset for Success with Trixy Castro

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like inclusion and marketing. Today, we'll be breaking down the entrepreneur's edge, cultivating a mindset for success. To drop these value bombs, I brought Trixie Castro into EO Fire Studios. Trixie is a dynamic entrepreneur with a remarkable career spanning over two decades. She has founded and invested in over 50 companies across diverse industries. In today's information, we'll talk about a positive mindset, the imposter syndrome, self-doubt, turning business challenges into opportunities, mental resilience, and oh, so much more.

0:42And a big thank you for sponsoring our episode goes to Trixie and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lance, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. AI technology is transforming the way we do business, and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. Over 41 ,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform.

1:22Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash fire. Trixie, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hello, thank you for having me. So there are so many things that people disagree with that I truly believe that one needs to have. But the main thing is you have to believe in yourself. Regardless, if people agree, disagree, you have to believe that you are the business. If you truly hold on to that, you can conquer anything. Trixie, we're talking about the entrepreneur's edge, cultivating a mindset for success.

2:06And you believe that cultivating a positive mindset is actually going to influence the overall success of our individual businesses. Tell us more about that. I'm living proof that that is the truth, right? So if you can change your mindset, instead of focusing on the things that are wrong and the challenges. And you can change your mindset to realize that if you're having a challenge, it's probably likely that others are too. You can turn that into a revenue opportunity into another business. It's exactly what I've done multiple times. Fire Nation, I really hope you do understand that there's so much power within.

2:44Like a lot of us are looking outward for validation, for opportunity, for permission. But we're gonna get around that today because we have a lot to talk about around this topic. And feelings of self-doubt, Trixie, the imposter syndrome, I mean, to be honest, they're just hard to avoid as an entrepreneur. I mean, they're human emotions. What strategies have you personally used to overcome these feelings? How have they impacted your personal entrepreneurial journey? Look, I had so many odds against me like many of us do, right? I didn't look the part. I didn't come from the bike rack round. That's right school, this, that, and the other.

3:20And what I learned early on was I am me and I need to be proud of that. And let me start celebrating the wins and let me also keep my eye on the vision. So I encourage people to write down the vision and the goal because you're going to need to reference that when the days get tough, when the self-doubt comes in, if you see that you're trying to build something greater than yourself and you remember the vision and your why, that is game changing, right? And then also write down some of the wins and celebrate those because there were things that you did that helped you accomplish that win. What are those steps?

3:55When you had A, B, and C that were wins, sit in that for a minute. Look at the vision and you can combine the two and you can get out of your own head, right? And be able to say, you know what, I am worthy. I am bringing something valuable to the table and I don't need to listen to all the noise. And as you do that, it becomes like driving a car like anything else. You know, you start to really start to see it as second nature to just be like, okay, yes, I can. And when those feelings come in, they're just a feeling and you're able to dismiss them and work through them. Trixie, I love real world examples.

4:30Share with us a time that you turned a business challenge into an opportunity through a shift in mindset. Let's get real specific. Let's hear that story. Perfect. So I had a company, Genesis Capital, which was a lending company. I started it true entrepreneur, a phone and a desk. Okay. That was going great, except that then the market shifted, right? And there was a downturn. And so now my clients were having a challenge. They were having challenges purchasing the real estate that I was going to lend on. So what do you do, right? Do you close up shop and say, okay, it was a good run. It was fun while it lasted.

5:06I'm glad I, you know, built a product or do you say, okay, I see this problem. I see this challenge. Let me figure out how to make this a solution based entity. Right. And I looked at it and I thought, huh, they have to be two different things. Let me build a new company. And I was able to put together on a post-it note that later became a real business plan, an online auction company that became tremendously successful. I ended up selling to Fidelity. So that mind ship, I'll never forget. I was driving and it was like the world was crashing on me, right? And it was out of my control and really stopping and saying to myself, wait a second, this is a mind shift opportunity because this is a challenge that someone else is having.

5:50It's out of my control. It is now my challenge. How can I solve for it and turn it into a revenue opportunity? That is one of the many examples that I can give you where mindset at that moment changed the game in my course for me. You said you have many examples. So I'd love to you go through another one? Because again, when we hear these real world examples, listeners, people that are just enjoying this can put themselves in that situation and say, wow, I resonate with that. I feel like I've been there or maybe I'm going to be there in the future and then I can act this way. So give us another one, Trixie.

6:24Let's tell another story. Absolutely. So in order to build a lending company, you have to raise money and raise capital. At that time, the institutional world hadn't gotten behind this type of product. It was unknown. I'd go to cocktail parties and people were like, well, what are you talking about when I would explain it? Right. And so I was used to that. So I counted the other day, how many times I could remember, I literally went back to a calendar to meetings I had taken. I had over 85 meetings, right. With potential investors, with people that showed interest that said no to me, they weren't going to give me the money.

7:02I already had the demand. I had a couple hundred million dollars of demand. Imagine that wasn't like, oh my God, I'm thinking about an idea. This was real opportunity. And I had this definitive moment of, wait a second, if they can't see that this is real opportunity, maybe this isn't going, maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. And it was in that moment that I stopped and I realized I'd gotten the door closed so many times that I sat down and I went and I went to Starbucks, went outside, had a coffee, gave myself two hours to just no noise and think about every single possible solution on what I could do because I knew the demand was there.

7:41It was just my message. How I was going about it wasn't being heard properly. And I kid you not, within two weeks, I had raised the money. It was reframing what I was saying. I was so passionate about it and I was, you know, believed in it and I was doing it. I was doing all the things, but it wasn't translating to the receiving party in a way that they understood the opportunity. And when I took those two hours to get out of my head, right, and get out of the emotional part of having gotten the door slammed on me so many times, I was able to reframe and really hear what were the things they needed to understand.

8:19And it changed my life. It really changed my life. And we were able to move on and turn that exact same company where we were doing a couple billion dollars a year lending. And if it hadn't been for that moment where I sat down and really reframed my thinking to really hear why the other party wasn't understanding what I was trying to convey, it would have never happened. The entrepreneur's edge. What does cultivating a mindset for success mean to you? It means every day working on it. It means knowing that you are the business. And just like you invest in other people, other products, other things, you put the time in to invest in yourself.

8:58You educate yourself on things like this, exactly what we're doing today. You educate yourself by being around like-minded people that are going in the same direction. It doesn't have to be in the same industry, but going in the right direction, in the same direction where you know that the core values are the exact same. If you guys are trying to press forward and build these companies, but it means every day reminding yourself that yes, you can, you're going to see problems. Of course we get paid to solve problems, right? And that's all part of it. But a problem is really an opportunity. And as you create more and more opportunities for yourself, you have to start looking at it as like, wow, I was able to accomplish that in spite of A, B, and C, I was able to accomplish that.

9:43And if you can take a minute to write some of those wins down, like I was saying, and you can hold on to those moments when you re-inspire yourself daily, when you take a little bit of time for yourself to clear your head, whether that's meditating, prayer, working out, whatever it is for you, start your day off that way. Give yourself the opportunity to be in the right frame of mind to really grow yourself and grow your business. But I believe wholeheartedly, it is a daily opportunity that we have to grow ourselves. Fire Nation, we have a lot to talk about around mental resilience, around influence of company culture and maintaining a positive mindset when we get back from thinking our sponsors.

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13:42Oh, it has been the foundation, I would say, of everything. Because look, we were going against, I was going against markets that were changing, that were out of control, the downturn that happened in 08, and, and, and, and, right? I was so young when I started in the business, it had never been done. It wasn't an asset class. I could, you know, I could go on and on. and what I learned quickly was that the mental resilience was something I had the opportunity to practice every day because there were a lot of obstacles, but anytime you're pioneering something, every time you're trying to start something new, not everybody's going to jump on board.

14:17And so I was able to learn to dissect that exact concept, right? Then not everybody jumping on board part. Let me really break that down. Is that because there's some really critical nuggets of information there that they're giving me that can help me avoid pitfalls? Is it that they're speaking to me out of their own experiences that are fear-based? Is it that it's just noise? And I was able to learn and teach myself and to look at the source and look at and really hear what they were saying rather than let it affect me, my emotions or my day, really hear what they were saying. And as I was able to put them in one of the three buckets, I was able to learn to tune out the noise.

14:56And I'll tell you 90 % of the time it was just noise. And I learned to develop this mental resilience, this mental toughness to say, okay, when it's noise, I can just get back up. I can step up. I can keep going, right? Just like someone in a boxing ring, you take the hit one or two times, but you keep going. And so when I looked at it that way, I was able to realize that it was just part of the journey and that I was very fortunate and lucky to be able to be on this journey, right? And to have something that I felt wanted to be a product sold. And as I tell entrepreneurs all the time, that mental toughness is like a muscle.

15:33You continue to build it. It's not something that you hold on to one time. It's a muscle that you build every single day, constantly working at it. How does a leader's mindset influence the culture of that company? The leader's mindset is going to always be what sets the stage, right? So if a leader is confident in themselves and in their ability, understanding that sure, they're going to have challenges, they're going to pivot, they're going to have moments that are tough, but they are the ones that set the stage and really understanding that their ability to communicate is critical, their ability to be transparent to their team.

16:10If you're not transparent, what you say isn't going to be heard, right? And so their ability to do these two things coupled with the ability to want to grow other people and to see that they're jumping on board to help you navigate your vision. So help them with their vision and their goals. It sets the tone for a culture that is unshakable. And I've experienced that so many times as I've learned so much from my teams. One example was I created a little like shark tank type of environment where it was, okay, bring me a problem and a challenge and let's solve it together. And that brought the closeness, because we were coupling all three of those things.

16:48We were communicating the problem. We're letting everyone bring us the problem and the solution. We're being transparent about it. So how do you maintain a positive mindset when you're facing significant setbacks in your business? Because it's happened to you. It's happened to me. It's really happened to any entrepreneur that's been in the game for any period of time. How is that positive mindset maintained when these significant setbacks happen? I think it's pulling from what you've been through, right? You can pull from the past, the good or the bad. And it's really pulling, okay, when I had a setback, I was able to overcome it with A, B, and C.

17:23And remembering that and holding on to that, right? And holding on to the feeling that you did get through it, you were able to see through it, and you were able to get the win off of it. As small as that is, you hold on to that because there's going to be setbacks. There's going to be times, like I was saying, where the market changes on you, where things are out of your control. And there's literally it feels like there's no way out, right? In those moments, go deep, go back to the times that you've had that feeling in business and the challenges that were in front of you that felt so insurmountable and somehow you were able to get through it.

17:57And I would also encourage you to seek wise counsel. There are people that have been through it differently. Sure. It all looks different, but people that have been through it that are willing to talk about it, that are willing to say, Hey, you know what? I did a B and C, or I tweaked this, but, but being able to objectively take a step back and realize that this isn't specific to just you. It's something we all go through. It's part of the journey really helped me a lot in being able to do that. You've talked about this a little bit already, but let's get into some steps that you took to foster this positive environment within your team.

18:32I did this talk one time and we had a sheet of paper and I said to everybody, okay, on the front of the page, write down everything that you need, that you want to work on and you want to improve on. And people were writing furiously asking for more time. Give me another sheet of paper, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Okay. Flip it over now, write down some things that you're proud of that you've done. Crickets. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, like maybe they didn't understand what I was saying. Right. Hey guys, let's write down something that we're proud of. Right. That we're, you know, that we've accomplished.

19:02And it was like one or two things. And I said, there's the problem. Right. We're so focused on the things that we need to fix and the things that we need to, that we consider a problem or that we need to work on, that we forget to even be able to articulate the things that we do well, the things that got us to be in business in the first place, right? So being able to have those moments with the team and truly live with that, sure, we're going to talk about the challenges and we're going to be transparent, but hey, let's also really look at the wins and the steps that we took to make those wins happen.

19:36And let's duplicate that and let's hold on to that. Trixie, we've talked about a lot of great things today, positive mindsets, influence, mental resilience. What is the one thing that you would really want to make sure our listeners took away from our conversation today? When the days get tough and when the outside noise feels overwhelming, dig deep into yourself and your why. Why did you get into business? What is your why? What is your vision? Hold on to that and don't let anything deviate from that because it's going to look different. Things are going to change. Your path might look a little different than you had intended, but your vision will remain the same.

20:17And if you hold on to that and you really direct your ship that way, it helps you get through those things. But more importantly, it helps you remember that, yes, you can. Fire Nation, yes, you can. and Trixie if Fire Nation is connecting with your words if they're resonating with your message what is their best way to connect with you what is your call to action for our listeners today so they can connect with me on Instagram Trixie Castro it's my handle my website sametrixiecastro.com I kept it easy and my call to action is just believe in yourself that yes you can and I'm here to be of service in any way.

20:53Fire Nation you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with TC and JLD today, so keep up that heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Trixie, T-R-I-X-Y, in the search bar, and the show notes page will pop right up. And Trixie, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you so much for having me. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Trixie for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, are you ready to rock?

21:25your very own podcast. Check out our free podcasting course where I will teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free, freepodcastcourse.com. I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lanz, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.

22:00Over 41 ,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash fire.

22:24Thank you.