Sharing The Gifts We Have With Luly B. Carreras

We all have gifts, and it is our calling to share them with the world. As a businesswoman, you should fight through the hardships and celebrate your growth. This is how Luly B. Carreras became a strong leader in her community. Luly is a family-first speaker, trainer, consultant and author of the Amazon best-seller Balance is Bull$h!t. Join Dolores Hirschmann and Luly in this conversation about how you can share your gifts with the world. As a woman, you can create a business around your lifestyle and family priorities so that you can experience joy in all that you do.

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Sharing The Gifts We Have With Luly B. Carreras

I’m so excited about my conversation with Luly B. She is a mom and self-proclaimed magnet for awesomeness. As the bestselling author of Balance is Bull$h!t, she helps women create a business around their lifestyle and family priorities so that they can experience joy in all that they do. I met Luly in 2016. At that time, I was so attracted to her boldness, Cubanness and joy. She is one of those people that the moment you get to meet her, you want to hang out around her. She has that energy of positivity and connectedness. She is a master at building communities and helping women build businesses that match their lifestyles. Check out this episode with Luly B. You don’t want to miss it.

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I’m so excited about this conversation. Luly B is a mom and self-proclaimed magnet for awesomeness. As the bestselling author of Balance is Bull$h!t, she helps women create a business around their lifestyle and family priorities so that they can experience joy in all that they do. Luly, thank you so much for saying yes to having this conversation together. I’m so excited to see you. We haven’t talked for a couple of years. I know we have been all on a journey. It has been a crazy ride for the world and all of us. Let’s start with your clarity journey. How did you find your path to this moment now?

First of all, I want to say thank you not only for having me but for doing the work that you do. It’s powerful and I love that you get to give us a platform to be vulnerable and courageous in sharing our journeys. All too often, when I’m interviewed, we tend to focus on all the glory moments. In preparing for this interview, I was so excited because I’m all about sharing the non-glorious moments, which is what gets us to the glorious moments, which is what the journey of clarity is.

For me, my journey of clarity has been one of a lot of very dark moments and excruciating years since 2017. I don’t know if you have ever been to an arcade or a Chuck E Cheese. It’s the game where the little animal comes up, and then you get to whack it. It’s called Whac-A-Mole. I feel like as I finally I’m getting back up, I have been beaten down or Whac-A-Moled back down. I’m grateful that I have the wisdom, discernment, grace, faith, guidance, and openness to know that that is clarity and growth at work. My journey has been one that I have a lot of appreciation for and one that I’m thrilled to share.

 

In your work, you open this path to empower women. In some ways, these are not your words. My understanding is you help women understand that they can have it all to some extent, have the version of all that they want, have financial freedom, have a business without compromising what they don’t want to compromise and design how it all works together.

Oprah said it best, “You can have everything you want, just not all at the same time.”

It’s your version of all. I’m a mother of four. You are a mother of two. I always said to my husband, “I have been a full-time business owner and full-time mama.” He said, “The math doesn’t compute,” and I will say, “It’s my math.” I define 100% what it looks like.

There are different stages and phases of life and we get to remember that. We get to remember that now my sons are in high school and I’m a single mom. It’s different from years ago when I was married and I had grade school children. Therefore, my business looks very different because I have made the decision for myself that my family will come first. That doesn’t mean that I don’t get to build this incredible business and do the work that I love to do. It just means that it might take a little longer, look a little different and I might have a few more boundaries.

I had a hard stop because I had another death in the family and I had to prepare to leave for Atlanta. I was facilitating a conversation. I’m a faculty member of a program and the meeting was supposed to be over at 10:00 AM. I said, “I have a hard stop at 10:00 AM.” I’m reminding you because I usually will stay on a few extra minutes and this time I couldn’t because the family had to come at 10:00 on the dot. Also, it’s being clear about those boundaries and being okay with saying and asking for what I want. I’m making those requests always with integrity and respect but making those requests nonetheless.

Let’s talk about the work that you do. What is the one thing you have learned from your people in your market? If you are a business owner and you are reading this, this is an important part of our conversation because we assume what our market needs. When we go and jump into the pool, we realize that where they find the most value is in things we either thought were obvious or taken for granted and that’s gold for them. I suspect that in the space that you are with women business owners, you might have been surprised. Tactics and strategies are obviously a part of it but we don’t need more tactics and strategies. Women business owners need something else. What is that else?

You can have everything you want, just not all at the same time.

As a marketer myself, I used to have a marketing agency. That’s how you and I connected because we geeked out on marketing several years ago. I learned a big lesson from my own community. What I do for a living is help women create businesses around their lifestyle and family priorities. It’s because I wrote that book, Balance is Bull$h!t, I did and I still do get the attention of the corporation. I get to do workshops and even team training, communication on purpose and cool things that I get to do in corporations as well.

I have had this community for many years called BOOST. In this community, women pay an annual membership fee. They get everything from workshops to one-on-one time with me. We do accountability groups, mastermind each month and do quarterly planning. I was attracting a lot of married moms of grade school children. One year, several Millennials joined the community. It’s because I’m a marketer, I paid attention. I went back to this little worksheet that I have that I always give my clients on your customer profile. It’s what I like to call your unicorn client.

What I realized is the one thing that I was all about is freedom and flexibility. These Millennials, while they weren’t married, didn’t have children and didn’t have the unique challenges that married mothers of grade school children had, they did have the desire, hopes and dreams to have freedom and flexibility. I was attracting them without even realizing it. I found it so fascinating and you are absolutely right. One of my clients said, “Luly, everything you teach us, we can google.” That did not hurt my feelings.

We have to be aware of that.

She is absolutely right, “Everything I teach you, you can google.” I love to quote, “The greats, I have maybe learned that from a book or course that I have taken but what I know that I do well is I bring all of that together for you.” At my core, I’m going again on the theme of clarity. What I have to offer are community and connection. I have access to the resources. I can make valuable recommendations for you. I could tell you about the book or the course of the person.

 

I will make text introductions and give you warm leads. I will also give you the place to create that for yourself because I’m a magnet for awesomeness. Many people that come into my community or attend my events are awesome because there are non-awesome people that think I’m crazy. That was another great point of clarity, “Being okay with not being for everybody.”

It’s like dating. We can’t marry and date everybody. There are a lot of people that we don’t want to date. The clearer we are with who we don’t want to hang out with, the clearer those that do want to hang out with us will be attracted. I always say, “Clarity is kindness and clear boundaries are absolute kindness.” One of the things that hurt relationships and us in the world the most is all of the assumptions that we do about other people, and then we behave around those assumptions. Assume makes an ass out of you and me.

When we operate in the assumption space without assuming things from other people and letting people assume things from us without us taking the lead to clarify and say, “I only work these hours. I make my meetings on time, show up on time and depart on time. This is how I function.” People can accommodate that. People function better when they know what they are dealing with. Clarity and clear boundaries are kindness. Speaking of clarity, how much clarity do you need to take action? What’s the balance between knowing the path, anticipating every step and taking action?

I speak in terms now of before and after my divorce. My divorce in 2018, while it was so excruciating and I don’t wish the experience on anyone, I have a deep appreciation for it because I have become a better version of myself as a result of all the pain that I experienced. One of the big lessons for me, in fact, in my BOOST Community, I often share like, “This is less than 382 of my divorce.” The growth that I experienced as a result of the pain is also my mindset. I do believe that there are lessons in everything and rainbows after the storms. We just don’t always see them because we are in the storm.

For me, I used to be that person that would dot my I’s and cross my T’s. A couple of years ago, I probably wouldn’t have even come on video with such little makeup. I would have made sure that all my background was perfect. Now, I don’t know that I strive for that perfection anymore. I still struggle with it every once in a while but my standard has become excellence versus perfection. I do look beautiful but I don’t put that extra unnecessary pressure, heaviness and weight on things. Also, I’m okay with not having all the answers.

Back to your question, I remember early on in my personal development journey with one of my mentors, Ali Brown. She always said, “Let the plane take off. Build the plane while it’s flying.” While that might sound absurd, some of the best campaigns and projects that I have launched and created, I haven’t had a very clear understanding of how every single thing was going to work. I’m grateful for that because, all too often, we allow the plane to sit on the tarmac for weeks, months, and years because it’s not perfect. It’s like, “I want to find the perfect name for it. The colors are not right.”

It’s like, “Just get it done, tweak it later, and then you have a great story of, ‘”Do you remember what it used to look like and how crappy that was? Look at it now.'” You then get to celebrate the growth. I’m very much now of the mindset of, “There is a preparation that needs to take place. We are not going to be irresponsible, either. We are going to take the necessary time to do the research and planning but also not get caught up on the tactics that might not matter.”

There are lessons in everything and rainbows after every storm.

At Masters in Clarity, we talk clarity. There is a balance. There is only so much clarity you need to get that plane off the ground. As it’s flying, the answers to many of the questions that were holding you back are revealed and you can implement them. I always say, “When we drive at night, we drive really fast when we drive our cars.” Sometimes there is no moon and it’s pitch dark. We can only see as far as our headlights will show us but we trusted there’s a road and we continue at 60 miles per hour knowing that the next mile will be revealed every time we move forward.

Here’s the thing. You and I are similar in that we love our work. Through the last few years, you and I have had some long coffees. The last few years have changed our lives. Like your situation and my situation, all of a sudden, we needed to become financially independent for different reasons. Your divorce, my husband’s divorce with his family business and what that has entailed for us. They are all struggles in their own way but we have been able to navigate these moments in our own way.

Some women will say, “I need to support my family. I will go find any 9:00 to 5:00 job and just muscle-through.” We are the lucky ones because we get to financially support our families while doing work we love and work that we are clear on our impact. What is that impact that Luly B has in the world and that you will continue to have and you are dreaming of having even more?

You gave me chills. I do believe, like Marianne Williamson says that, “We are all born with gifts.” Those gifts come in the form of talents, skills and abilities. It is our duty and responsibility to share them with this world. That’s something that I have been telling my children ever since they were little. It was important to me as a mom that I model that for them.

For me, I’m big, boisterous, bold and loud. I’m a rainbow in people’s storms. I’m going to see that glass half full. I’m relentless and stubborn because I’m not only a woman but I’m a Cuban and a Capricorn. I don’t know how to tone it down and lower the volume. I have finally started at the age of 43 to embrace that and realize that is what makes Luly so amazing. What makes me so amazing is my ability to love in the way that I do. It’s because of all of those things that I mentioned, I get to create the impact that I was born to create. I didn’t decide this. This was decided for me. I just paid attention and answered the calling.

I’m getting chills and freezing now. You and I are in the business of not on our watch where women play small, moms suffer and talented people that can change the world will play small because you and I play big. I’m Argentinian from an Austrian mom, which is a challenge because I’m bold and loud. My mother is very subdued and quiet with an American New England husband. It’s a combination but I love it.

I would suggest you pause and read all of Luly’s I ams. I know they float out of you but that’s a result of years of intentional work on herself. You say overnight success. There’s no such thing as overnight success. The I ams she said are years of intentionally I am in herself into manifesting the most beautiful, powerful, and strong leader that she has become to her community. I’m so honored to witness you.

 

Thank you very much. I feel that. Also, that level of clarity is what keeps me going, whether it’s divorcing from a business, losing a home, getting a divorce, losing a loved one, losing your career or job, we have all experienced that sense of loss or the sense of feeling lost. The thing that we get to remember is that everything in life is temporary and to be reminded of that, and then to look for that alignment. I know for me, that’s a big word.

I did a workshop where I was able to come up with my why statement and create my core values based on my top five Gallup’s strengths from Gallup StrengthsFinder. I was so excited that I became certified in teaching the workshop. It was groundbreaking for me. The reason why I shared that is because that is my why statement and my core values have now come back to be my litmus test.

When I get asked even to be on your show, partner with somebody, be on a panel for an event or be hired for something, I get to go back to my why statement and core values, and ask myself the question, even when I’m excited about it or maybe I’m not even excited about it because I’m scared, nervous or there is shame around it. I always come back to that why statement and I will say, “Is this in alignment with who I am and what I was meant to do?” If the answer is a resounding yes, then we make it happen, whether we are scared or not.

As far as the dog times, we have mentioned that a few times in this show. They are bridges. The saying goes, “If you are going through hell, keep on moving forward.” Keep on going until you see the light because who we become as we go through the mountain or around it is priceless.

One thousand percent, which is why I’m reiterating it because I don’t know that a lot of people are willing to have those conversations. My number one strength is positivity.

Mine is wooed and I suspect that you are a woo too but maybe not.

I’m a positivity, achiever, communication, woo and arranger.

I’m woo, activator, strategic, connectedness and visionary.

Those strengths it’s like playing to that. I am that glass half-full. One of my clients says I’m the queen of perspective and I do. The reason why I’m focusing so much on the darkness also is because I understand that a lot of people are in the space of not knowing, which has always been the case but COVID brought that to light. I lost my father, hero and first love. It was partly because of COVID.

The journey that even that I went on of allowing myself to be okay to not be okay, be sad, and lean into support, that journey did start. My divorce did prepare me for the loss of my father of being able to experience peace and grace among so much excruciating pain because we are always in training for something bigger. Whenever I’m going through a struggle, I always say, “This is going to be a great story.” Not to make light of it but it’s like the Hero’s Journey, “This is going to be a good one. Something big is coming.”

Allow yourself to be okay with not being okay.

As we wrap up, I like to ask you two questions. One is, what is a book, podcast or Netflix series that we must check out?

I love Brené Brown. I feel like Brené Brown is for everybody, whether you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, still in college, have a PhD or in any phase of life, Brené Brown is absolutely phenomenal. A great way to start with her is her Netflix. It’s a quick program. It’s probably considered a documentary. It’s a talk and lecture. It’s so extremely powerful about courage and vulnerability.

She has a slew of amazing books. My recommendation is always to watch that, and then go onto her website and look at the book that speaks to you. What I appreciate about her is that she researches. Not only is she talking about these things but she has the data to back up the stuff that she is talking about. If I had to only choose one, it would be Brené Brown.

Go check out her friend, Brené. Clarity is important but action is critical. As we say goodbye, what is one action that you can invite our readers to take as a result of this episode?

One action that I would love for you to take as soon as this episode is over is to write yourself a letter. Write yourself a letter as if you were writing to your best friend. Think about all the things that you say to your best friend, the way that maybe you admire him or her, what you appreciate about them and the things that make you proud of them.

For some of you, you may have to write this because it’s to yourself in you so in the second person. “Dear Luly, I acknowledge you for everything you have been through and continue to show up with courage and compassion for others. I love how you are sharing your story vulnerably and how you keep doing that thing.” Write that letter and then seal it. Keep it in your drawer for 30 days. Set some reminders. Maybe it’s a calendar reminder or a reminder on your phone, and then mail it to yourself in 30 days.

I love that because, at the end of the day, we are our own best friends. If we don’t choose ourselves first, how will people choose us?

So much clarity can come from taking that action as well.

Where can people find you? Any parting thoughts?

Where you can find me is my website, LulyB.com. I was hacked. Now, I’m focusing on rebuilding Instagram. I have a little bit of Facebook presence but again, clarity. I’m focusing on one thing because it demolished a lot of things when I was hacked. Now, it’s on Instagram and it’s @ThatLulyB. I’m great about checking DMs. I love following back the community. I also have an opportunity for you to schedule a quick chat with me. If you need to bounce ideas, have a question, want to chat, maybe there’s a business opportunity to get to know each other or want to say hi, we can also schedule a chat. That’s on the link on my Instagram as well.

Go check Luly B out. Thank you, Luly, for sharing you, coming, showing up as beautiful as you are and sharing the journey. At the end of the day, we want our readers to understand that wherever they are, they are on the right path. Keep honoring your purpose and keep them moving forward.

It’s definitely not a straight line. That’s right. Thank you so much for having me.

You are very welcome. Thank you so much.

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I had the most amazing conversation with Luly. Was it amazing because it was all about the great things in her life? Actually, no. A lot of the conversation was around the struggles that she has had in her life in the last few years. Even though painful and you don’t wish them, not even in your worst enemy, those are the struggles that had led her to the growth that she is experiencing now.

We talked about her life as a businesswoman, her divorce, and the stress of becoming the main breadwinner as a single mom. We also talked about the loss during COVID. She lost her father to COVID. It’s a very rich conversation with a lot of honesty around what is real as women business owners and what do we have to hang on to and overcome to reach our goals.

One of the things that Luly suggests and you should try this, is to write a letter to yourself as if you were your best friend. Go ahead, write that letter, sit on it for 30 days, put it in an envelope, seal it, and then mail it back to you. You can read it because that’s a gift that you are going to give yourself as if you were talking to your best friend, which is if we are not our own best friends, who are we? Make sure you check out this episode. It was a great one. I can’t wait to read your comments and see your thoughts around clarity and building a business while maybe sometimes not having life work as planned. Have a great day.

Important Links:

• Balance is Bull$h!t
• BOOST Community
• LulyB.com
• https://www.LulyB.com/meet-luly-b
• Masters in Clarity
• @ThatLulyB –Instagram
• Luly B Carreras – LinkedIn
• Link – Schedule chat

About Luly B. Carreras

A believer that everyone was born with a responsibility to share their gifts with this world, Luly B. empowers women and business owners to share their talents and abilities so they experience joy. She is a family-first speaker, trainer, consultant and author of Amazon’s best-seller “Balance is Bull$h!t.” By sharing her own expertise, challenges and experiences, Luly empowers women to create the lives and businesses they desire through inspirational events, personalized coaching, workshops and mastermind groups. She is a faculty member of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program at Babson College and Miami Dade College. Her message of leadership, empowerment, purpose and empathy has reached thousands of women and clients including Macy’s, GE, Marriott, Procter & Gamble and Dell. If you have a ton of ideas, feel like you’re all over the place, or ready for a tribe of women who climb, Luly is your girl to support you in making it happen!