Secrets of the Zen Business Warrior

7 Steps to Grow Your Business, Feel Excited, and Stay Motivated, AGAIN

Lina Betancur

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781642794564
• eBook ISBN: 9781642794571
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Women in Business

• Encourages readers to become open to new perspectives and beliefs
• Builds skills related to self-direction and self-awareness
• Fosters themes of creativity, innovation, and inspiration
• Fosters themes of faith and prayer
• Helps readers take their businesses to the next step
• Helps readers identify what obstacles are slowing down their business
• Fosters entrepreneurial themes

Chapter 1

MY STORY

MY PERFECT BUBBLE … OR WAS IT?

I just stared at the phone. He said yes and I could not believe it. I was actually looking at the very high possibility of leaving my country and moving to the United States.

David, my husband, had, just in a few words, changed the course of our well-established lives and opened a new destiny for us. Okay, so it was not a done deal yet. At the time, I worked at the leading telecommunications company in my country and there was a job opening, what everyone was calling “the dream job of the year.” Now that I had my husband’s support to apply, I would still have to participate in the recruiting process for the most coveted position the company had ever seen since its opening six years prior, and be selected among all those individuals applying—but I knew I was going to be the one chosen. I had no doubt. My initial fear of participating was that I knew I was getting the job. And two months later, I did.

I had the perfect job—earning probably three times what a thirty-year-old was making in the market then—at a great company. I had built wonderful relationships with the people in the office that became some of my closest friends. I was healthy and vibrant and I had been married to a wonderful man for three years. I had my life figured out, I felt invincible, life was perfect!

I remember vividly when my friend next to my office had jokingly said to me, “That job opening description sounds like they are describing you. Every single requirement is just you. You should apply for it!” I remember telling him with a smile, “There is no way David will quit his job and follow me to Florida! Besides, I love it here.”

A few hours later I was on the phone with David and I made a joke—a joke! “Would you like to live in Miami?” I said and he paused, and quietly responded, “Yes, I would.” After my initial shock, I told him all about the new position and what it meant for him: quitting his job (he was a director at the largest insurance company in the market), leaving his family behind for the first time in his life, and having no friends, no relatives, no one that we knew close to us there.

Still, he said, “Yes, okay, let’s do it.”

For me that type of personal attachments was non-existent since I grew up in different parts of the world. My dad had been a successful expat employee in an American multinational company, and every five to seven years we would move countries. Changing countries was like changing neighborhoods to me. Also, my parents lived in Costa Rica at the time and I did not have childhood friends to leave behind since I had just returned to my country for the first time in my life five years prior, so I had no attachments really. No heaviness in my heart plus my eternal disposition for a new adventure marked my easy yes to this opportunity. The only person I needed to consider in this decision was practically packing up already.

I did not know it then, but that March 2002 marked the beginning of my journey.

With big hopes, an adventurous heart, and an excited and positive soul I arrived in sunny Miami. It was June, really hot and humid, long sunny days … I was happy.

I had been one of the founding employees at my company. I was among the first twenty employees who, with just a business plan under our arms and a lot of determination, in a short period of ten months had a full telco company up and running with major economic groups as our parent holdings. No expense was spared; it was a fantastic playground! I had been working for five years when I applied to this dream position in Florida to lead the organization to penetrate the second largest target market in the world for our company.

I had changed to a new division, I had a new boss.

After I was appointed to my new position I stayed for another two months finishing the business plan and logistics before moving. I had only spent one week working with my new boss and I just had this guttural, un-resting feeling that it was going to be a challenge to work with him.

And it was. We never got along. I did not like working with him and he did not like working with me. It was like water and oil. Still, I thought, “Mmm … I will be in Florida and he will be here. I will call the shots there and I will make it happen—my way—and he will then let me be. Results will speak for themselves. This pit in my stomach is because I am just a bit anxious about all the changes at once, that’s all.”

I could not have been more wrong.

WHO PUSHED MY COW?

He was a genius, but in the “building relationships based on respect, trust, and loyalty” area? Not so much, in my personal experience. You know when people talk about emotional intelligence? Okay, he was a good example of all the “what not to do.” I learned a lot from him, I promised myself I would never treat anyone that way, and thanks to that experience, today my company’s philosophy is based on “Delivering Happiness at Work,” one that has fulfilled me and those who work with us in the most wonderful ways. “Everything happens for a reason and it is always to our benefit.”

I had been an achiever all my life, an overachiever by any regular standard: straight A student, avid reader, well-travelled and cultured (thanks to my parents), bilingual, a jack of all trades when it came to sports, healthy and fit, and emotionally well-grounded thanks again in large part to a loving and nurturing childhood environment. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, had an MBA, and my career path took off really fast from the moment I submitted my first resume. I worked with two of the leading companies in their industries before I joined this one and pretty quickly I was doing amazing.

That is, until I took this offer and had this person to report to. Then all went down the drain.

Long hours at the office were a regular thing. Twelve or fourteen hours were the regular norm, but that was okay—it was a start-up and that was what I needed to do. The members of the Board had approved this project only if it was in the positives from the beginning, so the only way to do this was to keep all costs at a bare minimum. Before I left my country, my boss asked me to voluntarily sign a release to all my employee’s rights if I wanted to take the position. It was made abundantly clear that if the project failed for any reason I had no rights to be relocated back to my country or transferred to another position or to have any kind of compensation for the years I had previously worked. I signed it all. In my mind, there was no going back and no room for failure—I had never failed before at anything related to my work, anyway.

Pressure to make the sales budget was there all the time, and that was okay too (I own and run a business—without sales, you don’t exist!) but it was the way it was done, the feelings of being utterly alone with no resources to use (no marketing budget, no money for additional payroll, nothing additional) that made it extremely hard. I was working on all fronts at the same time. Once, I went with my husband to a Latin Food Fair. We both put on the company’s shirt and cap and gave away 7,000 free sample cards to people coming in under a 95-degree Florida sun in summer for eight straight hours. We could not spare $200 for two students to do this!

When I called my old colleagues from other departments of the company to ask for help in areas that were not my expertise, like financial and accounting reports for the Board, I was told they had been told they could not help—that I had to do them myself. I never felt teamwork, or shared responsibility, or a guiding hand from him. This led to my just keeping it all to myself. I could not show any doubts or fear because it was just not acceptable. Anxiety, fear, self-doubt, and sickness crept into my world for the first time in my life.

In the course of fourteen months I shrunk little by little and became a shadow of that bright, happy, optimistic, smart, and resourceful person I had been. I felt emotionally battered with no compassion. It was an “all business, nothing personal, all for your own good” attitude, but at the end of the day I ended up a coffee and Redbull junkie and drinking any Guarana-infused tea I could find to keep me going—while at night taking sleeping pills to be able to disconnect for a few hours. I lost fifteen pounds, and I was already slim by any standard. I was skin and bones.

The problem: I was all alone, doing everything. It was a one-woman show and I had a business plan that just had to succeed no matter what. If I did not, I was going to be out of a job, David out of a job, our lives upside down…

Then my deepest fear kicked in: my fear of failure. I never really cared much about money, about power, about approval—the “usual” drugs of choice. I liked them of course, but they were not what ruled my life. My fear of failure was my master and that particular component plus the hidden-agenda-kind-of-handling-matters my then-boss had with me was the perfect combination to make someone like me bend over backward to do everything, no matter if my sanity, my health, or my relationship with my husband was on the line. It all seemed secondary to me then.

The inevitable came to pass: I had a breakdown.

One regular day just before getting into my car I just crumbled to the floor and could not stop crying. I felt overwhelmed, could not breathe, I felt such physical pain in my chest I thought, “This is what a heart attack might feel like.”

Some pills later I got to my feet and got to the office. I don’t know how I mustered the will to do it, but I did.

It went on like this for a year. I can’t even recall details now—those days are in a kind of a fog—I just remember the dreadful feeling of waving goodbye to David with a knot in my stomach and swallowing hard not cry, every single morning. He had his share, too. He had not been able to find a job for eleven months, and it was slowly eroding his natural optimism. At that moment he was the stronger of the two and held us together.

Everything happens for a reason and now I look back and I see that this time made him mentally stronger and also gave him the time to study real estate. Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad, Poor Dad) became our favorite mentor those days. This would become one of the stepping stones in my journey.

Just about two weeks before my first anniversary with the company, my boss travelled to Miami for a telco fair. I worked long hours for three days at the fair and at the end of the last day he just said, “We need to talk. This is not working.”

Time stopped. My heart and soul sank. I felt like throwing up.

I had given my blood, tears, and sweat the past year, I had traded my life, I had uprooted David from his family, friends, and work. The business plan was doing perfect, we had become the leaders in the market segment we had targeted, it was a huge success, wiping out even the oldest competitor in the market. How could this be happening to me?

Two days later I was walking out, with my brown box and the shocked looks of my team. I clearly remember that day. That same afternoon I had an appointment with an immigration lawyer and he told me that I had thirty days to pack and leave—my working visa was expiring in two weeks. I felt like a complete failure. I felt a searing pain in my heart and soul like I had never experienced before. We went to Lincoln Road, a tourist area in Miami, and we both sat down in the middle of the pedestrian walk. The feeling was totally surreal: I had no job, my husband had no job, I had no working visa, in thirty days we would become illegal if we stayed, we had brought all our belongings from our country, including our two dogs. Resentment and rage never felt so real.

STORY—PUSHING THE COW OFF THE CLIFF

Original Author: Unknown

Rewritten by Philip Chircop

A long time ago, a Monk set out on his travels accompanied by his assistant, a Brother. Night was falling when the Monk told the Brother to go on ahead to find lodging. The Brother searched the deserted landscape until he found a humble shack, in the middle of nowhere. A poor family lived in the hovel. The mother, father and children were dressed in rags. The Brother asked if he and the Monk could spend the night in their dwelling. “You are most welcome to spend the night,” said the father of the family. They prepared a simple meal consisting of fresh milk, cheese, and cream for the Brother and the Monk. The Brother felt moved by their poverty and even more by their simple generosity.

When they finished eating, the Monk asked them how they managed to survive in such a poor place, so far away from the nearest neighbors and town. The wife looked to her husband to answer. In a resigned tone of voice, he told them how they managed to survive. ‘We have one cow. We sell her milk to our neighbors who do not live too far away. We hold back enough for our needs and to make some cheese and cre...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: My Story
• Chapter 2: Step 1 – Clarity: Know What You Really Want
• Chapter 3: Step 2 – Your Reason Why: Why Do You Want What You Want?
• Chapter 4: Step 3 – How Will You Get It?
• Chapter 5: Step 4 – Understanding What Prevents You: What Is Slowing You Down?
• Chapter 6: Step 5 – Success: How Will You Know You Have Succeeded?
• Chapter 7: Step 6 – Action: One Day vs. Day One
• Chapter 8: Step 7 – Trust and Faith: Listen to Your Heart
• My Wish for You
• Acknowledgments
• Further Reading
• About the Author
• Thank You!