Stop Playing Small: Giving Yourself Permission to Expand Your Life and Business

In this powerful episode of the Be The Solution Podcast, Maria Quattrone sits down with leadership coach and real estate powerhouse Lucy Quiñones to unpack a topic that impacts every entrepreneur, agent, and professional: playing small.

Even high performers often limit themselves without realizing it. Through personal stories, mindset breakthroughs, and real-life experiences, Maria and Lucy explore how fear, past identities, and limiting beliefs keep people from stepping into their full potential.

This conversation dives deep into mindset, identity, discipline, and the courage required to expand your life, business, and impact. If you’ve ever felt like you’re capable of more but unsure how to break through, this episode will challenge you to take ownership of your growth and stop shrinking your vision.

Key Takeaways

• The Hidden Ways We Play Small
• Identity Shapes Results
• The Power of Action and Consistency
• Success Requires Seasons of Focus
• Playing Small Isn’t Just About Money

Best Quotes

Lucy Quiñones:

“Playing small is often so deeply embedded in our identity that it takes real work to uncover it and rewrite who we believe we are.” 

Maria Quattrone:

“Who do you need to become to have the life that you want?” 

Guest Contact Information

Lucy Quiñones
Broker / Coach – Century 21 Birchwood Realty
Cape Coral, Florida

Programs Mentioned:

• Money Making Mondays
• Winner Wednesdays

Lucy works with agents and entrepreneurs to develop mindset, discipline, and high-performance habits.

Growth begins when we give ourselves permission to step beyond the limitations we’ve accepted for years. Whether it’s business, relationships, health, or personal fulfillment, expansion requires courage and consistent action.

As Maria reminds listeners throughout the episode: the journey toward success begins by deciding who you are willing to become.

Connect with Maria Quattrone:
Facebook: Maria Quattrone
LinkedIn: Maria Quattrone
YouTube: Maria Quattrone
Instagram: @maria_quattrone
TikTok: mariaquattronerealestate
Website: MQrealesate.com
Office number: 215- 607-3535

Transcript

Welcome And Topic Framed

Maria Quattrone 0:00

Friends, welcome back to the Be Dissolution Podcast. And I'm excited to bring back Coach Lucy Q. Lucy Q and Maria Q. How about that? Uh, she is a friend of the Be Dissolution Podcast, and today we are gonna break down gosh, this is such an important topic. Give yourself the permission to stop playing small. And at some level, we all play small. And sometimes we don't even recognize that we're playing small. So welcome, Lucy.

Lucy Quiñones 0:31

Thank you, my friend Maria. It is a pleasure to be here with you once again. I really love your podcast, your spirit, what you bring to the marketplace. I love your example that you lead with. So thank you so much for inviting me again.

Maria Quattrone 0:51

Oh, my pleasure. I'm excited to dive in with you this morning about what does it mean playing small?

The Secret, Setbacks, And A Wake-Up Call

Lucy Quiñones 0:59

My goodness. I could think back to 2021 when I was literally seeking when your mind tells you you can't do it, but the pit of your heart and soul tells you there's more, and you find yourself in that tug of war between what your psychology says and what your heart says. And I remember listening to Lisa Nichols. I don't know if you've ever heard of Lisa Nichols, she was actually one of the artists in remember that movie in 2020, The Secret? I too. So I remember in 2006, and that was when in our area, Southwest Florida, people started talking about the sky is falling, which was really the market was going through something weird. And uh a friend of mine called me and said, Lucy, you gotta come over, we gotta have coffee. She was leading this big development in uh downtown Fort Myers. And I'm like, okay, she goes, I want you to look at this. You've got to look at this. This is incredible. And it was the movie The Secret. And I could recall sitting in that room thinking, like, oh my God, the solution is gonna be so simple. I just gotta start thinking about what I want and it's gonna happen. Fast forward 2021. Um, after going through a lot of hell, not only the market crashing in 2008 and surviving that, working on making my comeback in 2012, picking myself up from the ashes and you know, starting again or starting, you know, to come back in my business after losing 90% of my agents because everybody left the industry. I remember I found myself again in a place where I was, this is this is just not working out the way I've been I've been envisioning it. And here was Lisa Nichols on this three-day Zoom, because back then everything was Zoom, and she says, When are you gonna give yourself permission to stop playing small? And she went into this whole thing about you know how she was told she would never amount to anything, and how her uh teacher told her that you know she didn't even know how to speak right, and here she is leading, you know, thousands and hundreds of thousands of people and making an impact on the world, and that just really stuck with me.

Maria Quattrone 3:36

And I said, it's true, we don't even realize how small, like we have not awakened to the reality of how small we are playing compared to the greatness that we have inside, and we all do have greatness because you know that there's a one in 400 trillion chance of you being born. Yep. So if that's the case, then there's greatness within all of us.

Mixed Identities And Early Scarcity

Lucy Quiñones 4:01

Yes, there is, and you know what? It's um crazy because when you say we have one in four trillion chances of being born, right? We win that race. I think that's obviously the biggest race of our life, but then we start being programmed from that very instance, even from when we are in our mother's womb, because everything is starts somewhere to play small. And even myself now, it's funny because I'm still going through that rewiring of myself, reprogramming of my psychology, my my nervous system. I'm much more aware of how my body reacts or responds to certain, you know, moments. And I do believe that playing small is so embedded within our humanity that it takes a lot of work to dig through all those layers and start bringing things to the surface where we can really deal with them. Um, and one of the biggest things, yes, years and years and years and like moments that we may not even recall, right? Um, instances that mark us, and then of course, we get into business and we're here and we want to be successful and we want to be that person, and then we're struggling with mixed identities, I call them. Mixed identities.

Maria Quattrone 5:31

Let's talk more about that. What do you mean by mixed identities?

Lucy Quiñones 5:34

So I recall when I first got into real estate, obviously, coming out of the medical field, I didn't know how to sell anything. I don't come from a family of entrepreneurs. I do come from a family that's very hardworking, that has a lot of work ethic, that's very honest, you know, all the great core values, but I don't come from a family that um is in business for them, you know, they've always been achievers, hustlers, but I've I they come from saying, okay, here's a business, go run with it. So as a first generation immigrant, I could recall always living in lack. We never had enough, and even if we had, we like guard it because what if we lose it? What if we lose it? And now I realize that that is one of my identities. It was like a year and a half ago, I had an awakening moment where I literally realized that I'm still that little girl thinking that I'm gonna lose something or that I'm at a disadvantage, right? Because I remember going to St. Mary's Catholic School in Brooklyn, Williamsburg, New York, and these little Italian kids, right? They just did it because they didn't know any better. Go back where you came from. Go back where you came from. And um, and I was always that little girl that kind of shrunk back because I felt out of place, I felt awkward. So that's an identity, right? We all gotta go back and and look at, hey, where do I come from? Because there's an identity there, there's a there's a role that I may tend to play there. Or for example, I was always someone that rebelliousness was my best defense. So you grow up being this rebellious adult, right? Or you grow up thinking another one, because I I I got better impression that I than I think I do. I've had people, and we all have them, it's not just me. We all have people that reject us or want to dim our light or little haters, right? So my response, because I come from fighting for everything, was I don't care if you don't like me. I don't care if you don't like me. The truth is we do care, we just don't have to be attached to that. So one of my other identities was I was walking or fighting with everybody, like psychologically having a battle with everybody. And it's funny because little by little, through these last five years of reinventing myself, I'm like, that's another identity. So then I realized, okay, who do I really want to become? Because that was one of my coachings that I took with uh, you know, in the last five years. Let's think about your compelling future and what does that look like? And let's talk to the future woman that is inside of you waiting to come out, and let's focus on that compelling future, that woman, what she walks, talks, looks, thinks, feels, acts, surrounds herself with, and let's focus on that identity. And that's a much better identity than the ones that I've been realizing that I've had.

Choosing A Future Self

Maria Quattrone 8:54

It takes a lot of work, and I talk about this all the time in real estate. I said, you know, who do you need to become to have the life that you want? Yes, because once you have all the information in real estate and you have the knowledge and you know what to do, and you already had the training, now it's so more for where you're here and you want to go here. So what needs to change inside? And that's where it begins. It's an inside game, yes, and then of course, it's always the action, it's always the action, but without changing what's here inside, giving yourself permission, that permission to hang small, that permission to say, it says, Well, who do you think she is? Well, no, who do you think you are? For saying who do you think she is? That's how that's as about you than it does about me. But we can be whoever we want, yeah. You know, and I think one of the things that happens uh in real estate, especially for high performers, is it becomes your identity. Yes, and and then when the real estate isn't going too well, right? The market, yeah, the market to a degree will dictate somewhat of the challenge. At the end of the day, there's still it's a so it could be the worst market ever, and you can have the most best year ever. Right. Yeah, but there's a there's so much that go into it, but at the end of the day, we have to give ourselves permission to step out of where we were to be able to grow to the next level. And sometimes it takes years for that to happen.

Market Cycles And Seasons Of Focus

Lucy Quiñones 10:34

Oh my goodness, yes. If somebody told me in 2020 when I left everything behind and had the blind faith to step out and say, I'm gonna go for more. I don't know what that looks like. I don't even know where it is, I don't even know where to begin, but I know I'm definitely not where I'm supposed to be because this is not my end. If if somebody would have told me it's gonna take you five to six, maybe 10 years, I would have ran back and hung on to playing small, to being in that little box, right? And never breaking out of it, and never daring to build the new box. And that's one of the things that I always say we have to um get out of the box, break the box, and build a bigger box. And there are a lot of roles, if we think about it, that we've been playing. So let's say, for example, what you're talking about, the market. The market's not doing well, it's not what it used to be. You and I were having a conversation. I mean, we are women that have the grit, the hustle, like we know what we need to do and we feel the struggle. So the way that I look at it is what a beautiful season that we are in where we're not closing all these deals that we used to, but we're in the perfect space and place to redesign, to be able to, you know, um reposition ourselves because the market's gonna come back. It always comes back, it always does.

Maria Quattrone 12:06

And it's the having the fortitude and the patience. You know, I showed you where I am today. Yes, I have an abominable snow mass out front and back of my house, staring at a massive amount of snow. I don't know how much it is, and this is the opening of the spring market, so and it's already, you know, a slower year. And that's just not here in Philadelphia, it's a national, right? It's down 10%, 9%, something, whatever. But the reality is, you know, you sit here and you think, okay, fine, it is what it is. Where can I put my energy that's going to give me back the most energy? And people want to talk about balance. So if you're balanced, we're probably not doing that well right now. Because we have to be into seasons of focus.

Lucy Quiñones 13:02

Yes.

Maria Quattrone 13:03

It's a season. So it's a season. And uh in our line of business, especially in our marketplace, you know, we have our biggest um opportunity from pretty much uh end of February until July to close deals. June. June. Because July is the lake, and then after that, we go down, you know, vacations and stuff. It's just how the our market works. And maybe we get lucky in the fall, but the last few falls have not been so you have to put all of your energy into taking this season, buckling down, saying, okay, what did I do last year? What did I do the year before? What did I do the year before? And it comes down to the choice management. What am I gonna sacrifice to get what I want from this life I created? And then deciding if you're gonna do it or not. If you're not gonna do it, then figure out some other life, right? Because don't beat yourself up if you're not gonna do and take the action, it's self-destructive. You might as well go drink a bottle of tequila, yes, it's the same thing in a different way. People don't talk about it like that, but it is self-destructive, it's self-sabotaging.

Fulfillment Versus Income

Lucy Quiñones 14:27

You know, one of the biggest things, and I believe that frustration, frustration is the that our own existence gives us to unfulfill it. Like any listen, I've never been in a season where I've made the least amount of money, like I'm in right now. Like, even when I think about it, I'm like, this is crazy. I could go do this, I could go do this, I could go do this. Like, I know how I make money in real estate. What's going on? I've never, Maria, I'm telling you, never have been in a season where I've made this least amount of money in my life. But I am in the most fulfilling, happiest, joyful, peaceful, overflowing season I've ever lived in my existence. And so that helps me to recognize that I must be doing something right because you don't get this joy, this happy, you know, this peace, just this overwhelming feeling of overflow and bliss if you're not doing something right. So let's look at it from the other perspective: frustration, stress, anger, irritability. That was me, and I was making all the money. I I had money, the title, the company, you know, the the brand was unfulfilled. So I think that we need to wake up and, like you're saying, make a decision. Where do you want to live? Because if you're unfulfilled, it's because you're not living in the space that's going to get you to playing at your greatest. You're not even in preparation. So a lot of people right now are in this self-sabotaging mode. They know what to do. Who do you want to become? Like I ask, I'm around agents every week, agents that work with 20 different brokerages. They come to my weekly sessions. Who do you want to become? And they've got this great idea, this great imagination of who they want to become. But when it's time to perform, they're down here. And they're filled with what I call excusitis, and they're hunting squirrels, and they're distracted, and they're jumping from networking to networking, and they're making believe like they're enjoying life when we all know they're not. Because if you're unfulfilled, there's no way to enjoy anything. You always end that, you know, we all go to sleep at night. That gives us a moment of you know quietness. You know, just before you fall into unconsciousness, your mind is still going and your mind keeps going the whole night. You know, our body doesn't sleep, we sleep. But and so they're replaying that stressful situation. I don't have enough money, I don't have for the bills, I'm not having any closings, this isn't working out. Instead of getting getting into action, I think that's why I'm so fulfilled because I've never been more consistent with action in my life. So eventually the breakthrough is gonna come. If you do what you know you need to do, the breakthrough is going to come.

Process, Consistency, And Blind Faith

Accountability And Public Goals

Maria Quattrone 17:38

So that's the process. So following the process, following the process, following the process. So if you are in real estate or any type of sales, the process will be making the conversations with people who have a possibility to do some kind of real estate with you in the future or now. Following the process, if you're a listing agent, going on listing appointments, having conversations, doing comms, talking to people about the next steps. It doesn't mean that they're going to sign today. Right. So following the process though, eventually it'll catch up to itself. But you have to have a blind faith. I had something um years ago. Years ago, I think it was maybe oh eight or nine, but I went six weeks with no closings, no pendings, no new six weeks. Now you're talking uh to somebody who, you know, I was doing at that point, I don't know, 75 deals a year. But to have no closings, no pendings, and no new listings in six weeks, and I was on a lot of listing appointments. I literally was like, oh my God, is this the right thing for me? And then I had to remember, just keep going, just keep going. And then all of a sudden listings start to sell, listings came in, pendings happen, closings happen. But I remember that. And I think there's something to remembering your past, taking taking from what you can from it as a learning experience, you know, it's like keeping things like right here, right? Keeping things here, and I love what you said about giving, you know, who do you we talked about? Who do you need to become, but deciding, like deciding, you know, I wanted to do um this program that I'm launching for five years. For five years, and I'm watching all these people around me who aren't anywhere near as good in real estate as me. No offense to a lot of them, okay? But they're not. I have hard-proved results, you know, 192 listings taken last year, 160 and 24, 130 and 23. Right. And here I am not launching my listing course. This is the year I said enough is enough, is enough. So even somebody who, you know, I have a big uh book of business that I that I already gave it to me. I didn't come from anything, and here I am still I played small. Right? You play small, it's not it's every level there's a devil. Yes, every level there's a devil, and we all can always expand our box. Take actually this, forget about the box, no box, never one box, yes, borderless, yes, it's true. And I think we're kidding us, like your company and my company. You know, I never talk about companies on the podcast because we're brand agnostic, but we're both international companies, so where can it take us? Like me, I love, I love, love, I love my heritage, part of my heritage, and I am very in tune with wanting to be there. In fact, I'm in the process of getting my um dual citizenship. Okay, nice out of an Italian passport, and so that's that's all abouthing wrong with great USA, but it's all about choices, it's all about having choices. And I think that sometimes when we we get so up in like what's happening in our own life, but in our own head more so than ever. Talk about this a lot. What happens from your ear to your ear? This is the most expensive real estate we own. Yes, and we have to protect it. In fact, this morning I turned on the TV to see. About the weather, and I heard some lies on GMA or today or whatever show it was. There were just it was lies. It was lies about the FBI director saying that he did this, he did that, he took the plane. First of all, he's to play pay for the plane, but their narrative, they're outwardly lying to the you to the public. Okay. I said, you know what, Maria? Enough of nothing. Enough. I shut it off. And in fact, my husband's been wanting to get rid of our cable and just have like Netflix or whatever. Right. Or whatever. And I'm thinking to myself, you know what? We're getting rid of it. I don't need it. I don't need it. I can just be on YouTube. I could just be doing my videos. I can just be working and reading books. I don't need to be indoctrinated. Yes. Enough is enough, is enough. It's just an example. But it's a very poignant example at this point in time. You know, we're fed so much stuff. And we as individuals have to say enough is enough. Yes. This is my life. My life. Where do I want to go? Yes. What do I want to do? Yes. And then take the action behind it and tell the world. Yes. Yes. Because when I have social accountability, right? Like I did the 100 listing challenge last year. And I ended up doing a hundred listing appointment challenge. I ended up doing 132 appointments, which I was on one of your things and I I shared about that. That was the reason I was able to get to 192. Now I succeeded at that because I wrote it down. I had an idea. I wrote it down and then I shared it.

Lucy Quiñones 23:49

Yep.

Maria Quattrone 23:50

So at the the accountability. So what am I going to do? I told Lucy. I told Veronica. I told John. I told this one. I told all the people. And I told it all over social. Yes. So am I going to disappoint? I'm not going to disappoint.

Guarding Your Mental Real Estate

Lucy Quiñones 24:07

I think we take life too seriously. I think that we get into our business, our life, and we just take it so serious instead of understanding that it is an adventure. We are the captain of our destiny. And so when you were talking about, you know, playing small, where else are we playing small? Because if we look at it, are we playing small in our spiritual health? Are we playing small in our physical health? Are we playing small in our morning ritual? Are we playing small in our day-to-day operating? Because it's not just in our business. And I know a lot of times when we say, you know, give yourself permission not to play small, immediately we're thinking about making money and becoming successful and reaching the epitome of success, whatever that is, or becoming this great, famous, I don't know, influencer person. Well, but let's take it down to the fundamentals. Where else are we playing small? And that's where I think that everything we live gives us the opportunity to really take responsibility for this thing we have that's a gift called life. Because it's not just about playing small in business and finances. It's where else am I playing small? So that when I do get to that last moment, I mean, I always tell myself, like, I want to leave this world empty. So in the meantime, I've got to become my best version, got to figure out what that is. I've got to change my identities. Like, I see people with so much potential, but they're just stuck in the wrong identity. They're just stuck replaying this rinse and repeat cycle of broke-mindedness, undiscipline, you know, excusitis. It's like, oh my goodness, that used to be me.

Maria Quattrone 26:05

That used to be me. So you can, it's recognizable. Yes, it's recognizable. And this is uh the season because, well, we're in Lent for those that practice Lent. It's a good season for your spiritual journey, it's a good season for your physical journey to get in healthier, which is like all these things that I'm doing. Like I have my little lent booklet here that I got from my mother-in-law's church, not for mine, but it's beautiful, it's beautiful on it, even 10 minutes a day, 20 minutes a day of some kind of exercise. Gonna run up and down the steps today because I don't think I'm gonna be trudging out. I might though, I know, I might.

Lucy Quiñones 26:52

I went running this morning, it was so cold. Oh my gosh, it does make a difference to run in the cold.

Where Else Are You Playing Small

Maria Quattrone 26:58

Yeah, so getting everything into great, and also like living your life, travel. If you love to travel, I love to travel, travel, see the world, it opens up your mind, your heart, your soul. Yeah, I think traveling is one of the best things when you're you you meet different cultures, different foods, uh, the different ways of life, you know. I love it, yeah. It's what opens me up, and it would it it actually gives because when you travel and you have to get around and you don't know the language, there's a humbling to it, and and there is humility and you and empathy and for yourself sometimes because it's like, oh my god, I took the wrong train. Like I went solo travel and have taken the wrong train. In fact, one time I took the wrong train twice, like I kept that thing it up, uh yeah, but not so much now because my husband is very good with direction, so he's he's better with than me. But you learn, and then and when you have a partnership or you know, you're you have a significant other, you're married, whatever. Working with your partner in travel, you know, it's you gotta be in so there's that like that relationship, you know. And I have to remind myself I had a bad day, can't come home and take it out and be miserable, you know. So, how can I have more days that are you know fulfilled? Right, and that's really figuring out where you need to be and where you want to be. And it's okay to make a decision to say, you know what, this isn't for me anymore. There's something else, absolutely, and given that permission. Oh, this was so great, Lucy. Thank you, Maria. Love being here with you. I love having you on. You know, this was a great topic, giving your permission to stop playing small. And you have a training this morning about money making Mondays, and you have winner Wednesdays. So anybody who is in the Southwest Florida area, Lucy's in Cape Carl area, you should go see her, join her for her money making Mondays and her winners Wednesdays. And until the next time. Thank you. God bless. God bless.