CEO Confidence: Stop Playing Small Before Someone Else Gets Paid [Ep. 15]

If you’ve ever been in a room knowing you had the answer but stayed quiet, this conversation is for you. I’m sharing a real story from my business that revealed how much I’d grown, and how often we, especially as Latina entrepreneurs, play small even when we fully belong at the table.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• How “playing small” shows up in everyday decisions, from sales conversations to client calls.
• Why confidence is built through action, not perfection, overthinking, or waiting for the “right time.”
• The connection between clarity, leadership, and self-trust as a Latina entrepreneur and integrator.

If this episode resonates, share it with another Latina entrepreneur who needs a reminder that her voice, experience, and perspective are worth paying for. And don’t forget: the proposal you don’t send is the opportunity someone else will take.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hola amigas, this podcast is for Latina entrepreneurs building businesses while navigating faith, culture, and yes, motherhood. We unpack how your story shapes your leadership and build real life systems that help you grow without burning out. This is where Gudura meets strategy. So let's go.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

In this episode, I want to share a moment that stopped me and made me realize how far I've come. I was on a call with a client watching everyone around me struggle to answer something I already knew how to do. And for the first time, instead of staying quiet and playing small, I spoke up. In my head, I said, I've got this. And that was a moment I knew that was growth. Stay with me. Because if you've ever doubted yourself in a room where you've absolutely belonged and you knew that, then this one's for you. Being the oldest in the family has taught me to listen to be the one that's responsible, but also to let others go first. Not sure if that's something you've experienced in the past, but especially in the Latin culture, this is expected as the oldest. And sometimes as the other children as well, but especially the oldest. And then as daughters, it's even more, right? So I carried that into my business. I stayed quiet for a very long time. Actually, even before my business, as in sales, a lot of the times I was in a room with other salespeople, and we could all get that one client, but I would allow others to take over and take the spotlight. And I thought that was okay. And that was being nice. But funny enough, there was times where that client that was taken over by another one of my colleagues eventually ended up coming to work with me, whether I was just backing up that person or that person had left. And clients would be like, Why didn't you approach me? Why didn't you why couldn't I work with you? Why can I stay with you? Can you be my go-to person now? It was nice to hear that, but at the same time, I was like, why? Why do I do this to myself when I know I can add so much more value? Because I'm not just focusing on the sale, I'm focusing on a relationship. I'm focusing on making sure that that client is in a much better place than the first time that I met him or her. So I work as an integrator now. I really that's what I call myself. Like, yeah, I'm an advisor, I'm a coach, I'm a consultant, I wear many hats, but in reality, I think it all comes down to being an integrator where I bridge between my clients, where I'm a bridge between their teams and their projects. And in this case, it was a bridge between my client and their vendors. So for months, the client had been asking the vendors for a simple sales landing page, something simple, nothing complicated. And every meeting they kept stalling, and then questions would come up, and then no answers. And then one of the meetings he said, okay, if you guys can't do it, just send me or refer me somebody who can. And without hesitation, I said, You're gonna have a proposal by the end of the day. I send it and they signed it. The old me would have waited, would have second guessed, would have watched somebody else get paid three to five times more to do it, and probably way longer as well than if I would have done it. But this time honestly was different. This time I felt like for the first time I had gotten to that place of growth without even realizing it. And this time it was my business. I'm the leader, and if I don't have confidence in myself, it's gonna show. So I needed to make sure that I own this, and I needed to show up differently. We all wear different masks, we're all different every single day. We we act different when we're at home with our families, we're being with them, we love them, we're either the fun mom, when we're at work with our clients, we're the person that our clients are just going to us for that support, they're going for clarity, and for our teams are looking up to us to make sure that we have confidence in them, that we are leading them with clarity as well. So we wear different masks, but that's also building our confidence in the different places that we are, and confidence is not always loud, it's not always as loud as we want it to be. Sometimes that confidence comes from a quiet place, but it's a quiet action. That confidence came for me in that moment was to write that proposal, was to send the email, was to make the offer. And sometimes missed opportunities don't disappear. They come, but they go to somebody else, and usually at a higher price. And as an integrator that I call myself, I don't just see a one piece of the puzzle. When I work with my clients, I don't just see that one thing I'm working on. I often like to see the whole picture. So that perspective is different and it adds the value in. I know that. I know that's the value that I bring. And you are the same. You know that when you are coming in, they might think that you're just doing that one thing, but no, you are seeing the whole picture. You are seeing far more in different ways. That is that gift that you have, it is that skill that you're gonna use, are those tools and resources that you have that they don't, and somebody else doesn't either. And so all of this to say that sometimes our culture of humility is beautiful, especially as I mentioned that in the Hispanic community and the Latin community, culture of humility is beautiful, but not when it silences our expertise. So this shift didn't just happen overnight, I gotta tell you. It took a lot of time learning how to listen and practice to listen to myself, to that inner voice. And during this time, I'm a woman of faith, so I went back for a period of time, took my Bible during that season, and I said, I am tired of listening to all of these things, of the ideas, of the strategies from this person, of the whatever. It was coming out of all these different places. And I just wanted to hear silence. But that silence sometimes is hard to stay in a room where you can just breathe and listen to your voice. It's the hardest thing. And I've talked about this before. It's really hard to be able to practice that. But during that time, I said, Okay, Lord, just help me. I need you to speak to me because I am tired of listening to everybody else. I want to listen to you, what you have to say to me. And there is this verse that popped up, and it was Ecclesiastes 11:4, and it said, Whoever watches the wind will not plant. Whoever looks at the clouds will not reap. So if you keep waiting for the perfect timing, someone else will act. This verse here reminded me of was that we have to act. We can't always be in the clouds thinking. We have to act. So don't wait. And honestly, the last thing I can share with you is start tracking your wins, write them down, use a voice memo, record them. I record them actually in the car. Sometimes that's my quiet time. I turn off the radio, no more podcasts, no nothing. I just try to sit within my rides from picking up my kids or going to uh grocery store, whatever it is, is okay. I have my quiet time. What can I think about? What comes to mind? I grab my voice memo and I record and I say, Oh, okay, thank you so much, Laura, for this. I think I have an idea. This is what I'm trying to do, and I just go at it. Or thank you for actually just had this great call with this client or this person that I just met. She was amazing. She shares so much wisdom, she filled my cup. Like, those are the things that you want to write down because honestly, when you're stressed out or stuck on trying to create a content, those recordings, those notes, they will come from a place of truth, not somebody else's playbook. It is coming from you. And the more we know, the more we've learned, we're learning, especially in this new AI world, is that people want to know you. People want to know who you are. When you write your wins and go up to the moment where you're hesitant about something, go back to those wins, go back to those voice memos, go back to that journal and look up all your wins that you've had so that those moments of doubt come creeping in will start to fade away because you've done hard things, and this is no different. All right, amigas, if this hit home for you, share it with another Latina entrepreneur who needs to hear it. And remember, the proposal you don't send out is the opportunity somebody else will take. And don't forget to follow and subscribe. New episodes drop every Tuesday. Leave a comment. Tell me if this has happened to you. I want to hear it. Alright, amigas, until next time. Hasta luego, un fuerte abrazo.