The She Leads Podcast: Real Conversations with Women Entrepreneurs

To have a successful business, the first person we need to learn to lead is ourselves.

Victoria is the CEO of Ugli Ventures, a marketing consultancy for 6-figure female founders, and a podcaster. Victoria focuses on female entrepreneurs and optimizing sales and marketing strategies, team building and leadership development to establish sustainable, profitable 7-figure enterprises. She has cultivated global brands across various sectors and countries including the US, the UK, China, Sri Lanka, the UAE and Mexico. 

Over the course of her career, Victoria has observed that men typically possess a mindset wherein they’re less likely to feel the need to perfect every aspect themselves before delegating tasks. Contrastingly - and generally, women entrepreneurs often feel the need to ‘do it all’ and end up focused on lower level tasks that hinder their businesses momentum. To move more efficiently towards success, it is essential to understand your business from a higher strategic level, envision what success looks like, and rise above the weeds. This high-level perspective allows one to more easily build a scalable marketing machine.

Victoria believes women must do all they can to learn to delegate more effectively and focus on team building to drive business growth. The commitment mindset is something every business owner needs: create the goal, write real numbers down on paper, and check in on them every single week so you can adjust and keep the eye on the prize!

Let’s all commit to delegation for success!

Notes:
👩‍💼 Victoria is on a mission to help women entrepreneurs to success by focusing on a more feminine approach to running businesses rather than adopting the male way of working. 04:13
🤷‍♀️ How to create a successful marketing department: don’t do things alone - nurture your team.  09:38
🗝️ Delegation is the key to growth. 16:27
🧐 Hiring a team when you don’t have enough funds: who do you need in the team?  21:07
🧠 Setting your mindset up for success. Adopt the founder mindset and hit targets: the line of questioning that gets us to our goals. 29:54
⚡ Power of design thinking, setting goals, setting targets, and checking in with them periodically. 34:35
🪞 Interact with women that have achieved great things. Find your accountability partner. 36:38
⚠️ The process for everyone is the same: no one has all the answers. 41:56

Links:
Website and free guide: www.ugliventures.com/overwhelm 
Connect with Victoria: www.linkedin.com/in/victoria-hajjar
Connect with Adrienne: www.sheleadsmedia.com
Get your tickets for the 10th Annual She Leads LIVE conference - NYC October 17-19 https://www.sheleadsmedia.com/she-leads-live-2024
Listen to podcasts for women by women on the She Leads Podcast Network: www.sheleadspodcasts.com 

>> "I love ❤️ Adrienne and The She Leads™ Podcast!” If that thought crossed your mind at any time while listening to our special show, can I ask you to please take a moment and give our podcast some love? To do so, simply Rate, Review & Follow Us on Apple Podcasts & Spotify. Taking this simple action helps my team and I to spread the word about all the incredible guests of The She Leads Podcast and contributes overall to helping women leaders and entrepreneurs everywhere! 🗺️ Also, if you haven’t done so already, please +follow the podcast so you never miss an episode. Thank you so much!! XO -Adrienne  <<

Creators & Guests

Host
She Leads® Media
👩🏻‍⚖️ ⭐️ Adrienne Garland - She Leads® Podcast Network - 4 women X women ⭐️ 🎧 Sugar Coated Podcast Host| Leadership Conferences, Retreats #SheLeads #Women #entreprenuers

What is The She Leads Podcast: Real Conversations with Women Entrepreneurs?

The She Leads Podcast, hosted by Adrienne Garland, is the podcast for women leaders and women entrepreneurs who are sick of sugar coating what they say and how they say it. Each week, Adrienne explores entrepreneurial stories, businesses, and challenges that women entrepreneurs face with a wide range of guests who are open to sharing their authentic stories in a refreshing and real way. For far too long, women have been sugar coating our voices, thoughts, and opinions, but that stops here and now! The She Leads Podcast, formerly Sugar Coated, is the place where women leaders can express their brilliance without sugar-coating anything. This podcast offers a platform for super-practical, actionable advice for women to overcome challenges and to make a significant impact on our families, our communities, and our world. Adrienne Garland, CEO of She Leads Media - entrepreneur, media producer, and adjunct professor rejects the notion that women must be deferential to those currently in power and pull back our opinions. Join Adrienne as she dives into raw conversations with brilliant women leaders and entrepreneurs - sans Sugar Coating!

Adrienne Garland (00:00.91)
Hi everybody and welcome back to the SheLeads Podcast. This episode is brought to you by the SheLeads Podcast Network and the SheLeads Live Conference, which is taking place in October of this year. The SheLeads Podcast Network is the network for women by women. I am so excited today because our next guest is Victoria Hajar. She's the founder of Ugly Ventures.

which specializes in assisting startups as they scale from six to seven figures. Victoria focuses on aiding female entrepreneurs in optimizing sales and marketing strategies, team building, and leadership development to establish sustainable, profitable seven -figure enterprises. This stat, I can't believe that it hasn't changed, but less than 2 % of women,

have broken through the million dollar mark in their business. And Victoria is on a mission to change that. That is why I cannot wait to speak to her today. We talk about this here on the She Leads Podcast all the time. Victoria has a proven track record of success. She's cultivated global brands across various sectors and countries, including the US, the UK, China, Sri Lanka, the UAE, and Mexico. Welcome to the She Leads Podcast, Victoria.

Victoria Hajjar (01:25.006)
thank you so much for having me here. I'm so excited for our conversation today.

Adrienne Garland (01:30.094)
I cannot wait to have our conversation today because this is the thing. This is the thing. I talk about this all the time. I cannot wait to hear how you help women get from six to seven figures, break through that million dollar mark. I don't know what it is, but it is incredibly challenging. And I believe, I have a theory that...

when women start businesses and we pattern our businesses based on the way that men have created businesses, it does not set us up for success. We're building something that is not for us. So that's my theory. I haven't proven it. I'd love to do research on it, but I want to hear from you. Tell us, how did you get to be doing what you're doing with Ugly Ventures?

Victoria Hajjar (02:22.798)
Well, well, first of all, thank you for that. You know, it's been a 15 plus year career in marketing and I started my ranks as, you know, an assistant and worked up as marketing manager and director and eventually chief marketing officer for various organizations around the world, working exclusively, always directly with founders and investors and key stakeholders. So that's really a unique part of my journey is that I've always had this,

this portal into just founder psychology. And in the beginning of the career, in my career, most of the people I worked with were men. And so I was able to sort of build this foundation, understanding leadership and business growth through the lens of strong male leaders. And it was about 10 years into my career where I consciously wanted to make a shift.

to start working more with women. Because I believed so much and from hearing stats like this, that my curiosity was that there was something behind this statistic. There was something driving this 2%. And I started first kind of going into the funding side. I was really looking at, okay, well, there's a lot of bias in funding and that must be a major reason why.

Adrienne Garland (03:35.182)
Yeah.

Victoria Hajjar (03:51.278)
these stats are the way that they are. But as I started working more closely with female leaders, what I've observed is that there is a certain set, it's really like a mindset that I think men bring into business, especially when it comes to sales and marketing, that I feel like women do a little bit differently. And just as you said, I think that there's this misconception that we need to sort of act or drive the organization,

in the way that our male counterparts do. But for so many reasons, I feel like that maybe doesn't fit instinctually with women's need for just maybe it's cultivating deeper relationships or there's a sense of loyalty or that sense of teamwork, which may be a little bit different than how men build businesses and build teams. So that was sort of like my first observation where,

Adrienne Garland (04:48.046)
Yeah.

Victoria Hajjar (04:51.438)
And by the way, I've worked with some really incredible female leaders that do adopt kind of that male attitude. But for me personally, I didn't connect 100 % to that. And so I've been kind of on this mission to find and cultivate that in the communities that I have a different way of doing things where we can be maybe more nurturing to our teams. Because at the end of the day, it's about an attitude, it's about a mindset, but it's also about

Practical systems and that's kind of where in my mind the mindset meets the tactical pieces of business Yeah, so it's been it's been a very interesting journey to say the least

Adrienne Garland (05:27.168)
Mm.

Adrienne Garland (05:33.166)
Well, I feel like I have a very, very similar background to you. So I started out in corporate, in marketing, and I actually, my early in my career, I have an economics degree, so I got into finance. So I was always in the room, yeah, with men, male leaders. And you realize after a time,

Victoria Hajjar (05:34.702)
Thank you.

Victoria Hajjar (05:44.91)
Thank you.

Victoria Hajjar (05:51.662)
he was trying to...

Adrienne Garland (05:59.694)
that even though you go in as a young, strong, smart woman, that things are not the same for you as they are for your male counterparts. Even people that I attended college with that I was working side by side, there was a difference with the way that they were treated versus how I was treated. And it was so unfortunate because I was so naive. I thought we were the same. So,

Victoria Hajjar (06:26.446)
Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (06:27.118)
It's very interesting to see and I don't know that it comes from an evil place. It's just that there seems to be a more natural way that men fit into the corporate world than women. And I too think that...

Victoria Hajjar (06:48.974)
Hmm.

Adrienne Garland (06:51.854)
marketing and even especially sales, that is the driver of revenue for businesses. It's what businesses rely on to keep going and businesses need to be hyper -focused on revenue growth, otherwise there's no business. And I think that the way that business is structured and the way that corporate is created, it was very much designed...

Victoria Hajjar (07:08.91)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (07:21.902)
for a traditional male role. At the same time, more and more women are starting businesses and we're trying to figure out, well, how do we earn that revenue? What do we do? How can we do things differently? Because it doesn't work. We cannot be men. We just aren't. So I'm really, really curious.

What do you focus on in your work with your clients today through Ugly Ventures? What do you have women really focus on in order to grow their businesses to that seven figure and beyond mark?

Victoria Hajjar (08:05.614)
Yeah. Well, I want to touch, I want to touch back onto this idea of mindset. So I, I primarily coach and mentor women in that who have reached six figures in revenue and are working towards seven figures inside my accelerator. I have an accelerator program called the scalable marketing machine accelerator. And inside this accelerator, we go through a framework that is the framework that I've implemented.

Adrienne Garland (08:26.478)
Mm.

Victoria Hajjar (08:33.614)
across dozens of businesses around the world and essentially to the framework on how do you create a successful marketing department. And this is really important because we need to shift our mind from thinking that we need to, with our own hands, learn and execute all of the pieces of marketing, right? I think that there's a lot of messaging, which actually kind of boils my blood a little bit because I don't see the men that I've worked with thinking in this way.

Adrienne Garland (08:41.358)
Mmm.

Adrienne Garland (08:54.446)
Mm.

Victoria Hajjar (09:03.47)
There's a lot of coaches and consultants or like, you know, course creators that communicate to female entrepreneurs that we need to really learn it all ourselves. So what this means is, you know, take this course on how to run Facebook ads, take this copywriting course, take this, you know, social media management course. And this is...

Adrienne Garland (09:19.63)
Hmm.

Victoria Hajjar (09:32.654)
I think one of the things that are holding us back the most because we want to learn, which is great. We should be in that growth mindset. We want to understand, but part of us feel like we need to perfect it before we can give it away. And so when I look at how successful men are looking about building teams and have built their business from the start, I think there's a

Adrienne Garland (09:48.662)
Hmm. Hmm.

Victoria Hajjar (10:01.166)
deep understanding of a buy -in that is needed when it comes to sales and marketing. There is an absolute resolve for all successful founders that have worked with both men and women that they must understand the high level strategic fundamental pieces of sales and marketing and need to understand the core metrics that they need to be monitoring to measure what success looks like.

but there's no indication of me needing to execute this with my own hands in order for it to be right. And so I think this idea of doing everything ourselves, and again, there's so much communication to us as women entrepreneurs around burnout and all these things, because it's so real. It's so real that we are doing too much. We wait way too long to start getting the support that we need. And it's that.

that idea of, and I keep coming back to this in conversations where, you know, that statistic where women applying to jobs, like in how, and how qualified we are when we apply for jobs, usually, you know, women are, you know, 100 % of the qualifications are met before we would consider applying for a job and men are maybe at 50 or 30%. Right. And, and I think that that mentality that is so deeply ingrained in us,

Adrienne Garland (11:07.566)
Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (11:21.166)
Yeah.

Victoria Hajjar (11:27.502)
carries us into entrepreneurship where it's like, we need to understand and do well at something and understand something 100 % and have success in it before we can get that support in order to help us. But it's actually, I believe we go faster and we go stronger when we focus on cultivating the right team that's going to help us build the business, right? So I think that's the one huge...

piece of the puzzle, right? We need to be understanding things from a higher level, from a higher strategic level and understanding what success looks like as opposed to being in the weeds all the time. Because when you're in the weeds, we don't have the time to do that pullback. And that's really what keeps us stuck going in circles and circles. Because part of my core philosophy about marketing is really looking at everything that is

that we do in marketing, every single piece that we execute in marketing should be an interplay, should be connected to each other. And too often we get stuck in this rut of executing pieces of the marketing in silos. And when we're working in silos and we're in the weeds, it's like you can't see the forest from the trees. And that's when we kind of get on this hamster wheel of.

of pushing and pushing and pushing, and then wondering why we're not seeing the dominoes fall, that we're not seeing the effects of all of that. So that's one thing that's huge. And so that's why I'm so passionate about sort of teaching the systems, but from this high level perspective. So the scalable marketing machine is really looking at brand communication, looking at marketing growth strategy, but then looking at team and leadership.

Because I think that there's a huge piece of marketing leadership that is not talked about quite often, which is as a founder, your job is really to lay that high level strategy, make sure that it's being executed, but really connect yourself to the performance, like understanding what the performance means for marketing. So that means understanding your numbers, the most successful founders I've worked with. And I'll tell you, I've worked with, so inside my accelerator, I work with,

Victoria Hajjar (13:49.454)
Six -figure founders right working towards seven figures and that's what I help them achieve But in as a consultant, I've had the pleasure to work with multi -million dollar Entrepreneurs, I've even gotten to work with billion dollar founders some of the most successful female founders in the country and I've seen this this rule apply to the most successful founders. I've worked with these are the foundational pieces

Adrienne Garland (14:17.422)
Mm.

Victoria Hajjar (14:18.286)
And the other thing that I want to talk about when it comes to mindset is tenacity. So I think that there's a, maybe it's something that is in contrast inside of a lot of women. And I've experienced this myself, which is how do we be strong leaders and get results, be results oriented?

but still be kind and supportive. And I think this is what you're speaking of. So let's talk about this a little bit, because I think that that is the crux of the issue. How do we get performance? How do we get results and stay connected to that, bring that tenacity to what we're doing, but still, like, so we push, we push our team, but we still maintain like something that feels very important to us as women and very natural is that nurturing part.

Adrienne Garland (14:49.838)
Mmm. my gosh.

Adrienne Garland (14:57.742)
It is.

Adrienne Garland (15:01.678)
Mmm. Ugh.

Victoria Hajjar (15:18.286)
So I don't know what your ideas on that are, if you've seen that. Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (15:18.378)
Yeah. Well, first of all, I think everything that you're talking about, I'm just really taking it all in because I think about this stuff all the time. And I know for sure through observation, through reading articles, through talking to successful founders, that the key to growth, scalability is delegation.

That's it. You know, you cannot, you said it, you cannot do everything yourself. You have to be the leader of the team. And one of the things that I wanna jump back to or dive into, and maybe you don't need to do it right now, but I think that there's societal issues which keep us from delegating, right? That's very much ingrained in the fact that we need to do it all and.

be perfect and all that stuff. So it's unwinding and unlearning all of that. And then the second piece is, I think that there's plenty of women that would want to hire a team, but they just can't figure out the revenue piece of it. How can I possibly hire someone who's at the level that I need them to be when I can't even pay myself in my business? So I'd love to kind of...

talk about that and get some, maybe some practical tips or suggestions because team and delegation, those are 100%, you know, at least some of the keys to success. Mindset, I totally agree with you on, and one of the things that you just said, it almost triggered me because when I worked in...

Victoria Hajjar (16:59.31)
Thank you.

Victoria Hajjar (17:03.118)
Thank you.

Adrienne Garland (17:11.054)
corporate, I worked at one of the big four accounting firms and I was working on the internal marketing side of the house and I had a pretty large team. I had a team of 20 people and every single one of them were women and they were great. But half of them loved me and the other half of them hated me. And what I found out is that

Victoria Hajjar (17:37.646)
She's a genius. Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (17:39.054)
One of the reasons that they hated me is because I expected performance from them. And I am not a mean individual. I don't have a mean bone in my body. But when I demanded that we get work done, because that was what my responsibility was, I was actually called to the table for it. And I was punished for demanding that my team

Victoria Hajjar (18:04.27)
No!

Adrienne Garland (18:08.782)
work hard. And one of the remedies for that is that I needed to take the people that didn't like my approach for cupcakes and coffee and really kumbaya and be their mother. And that is not what I thought work was all about. So,

Victoria Hajjar (18:10.51)
Mm -hmm.

Adrienne Garland (18:35.246)
I eventually left there. It was definitely not the right fit for me, but I was really taken aback because my whole career in corporate, I had gotten to a certain point because I was so efficient and my team worked well and we got shit done. That was it. At this particular firm, they didn't value that as much as this sense of collaboration. So...

It's funny because I'm a woman and I love to collaborate, but I think because I was sort of brought up in corporate, I had that mentality that you get shit done no matter what. And it didn't sit well. So I really, it's almost like my whole identity was shaken because I had done so well almost adopting a male, push forward, get shit done.

Victoria Hajjar (19:17.614)
That's it.

Adrienne Garland (19:34.446)
mentality and the fact that I was a woman acting like that, it didn't jive with this particular firm and I left and started on my entrepreneurial journey, which has been so challenging. I mean, entrepreneurship, I love it so much and yet I can't crack the code on it. So one of the things that I would love to talk to you about is how to crack the code to get from six to seven figures.

Victoria Hajjar (19:55.726)
Yep.

Victoria Hajjar (20:01.998)
Yeah. Well, okay. I love all that. And there's two things here. So I really want to hold on right now to this idea of these opposing ideas of what it means to be a leader and how do we bring that tenacity? This is the thing that I have to say is, for me, it is also triggering, right? It's like, how do you, and I've been on both sides of it, right?

because I'm an entrepreneur, but I also do still serve clients on one -to -one consulting as a fractional chief marketing officer. So what does that mean? That means that I'm held accountable to report on the scorecard metrics. I'm held accountable to the investors, the key stakeholders. And in the beginning of that experience for me, as I started progressing in my career, and it's just like you in corporate, it changes you when you are...

having to present the performance to key stakeholders. And most of the time in my experience, they have been men that have a different attitude towards money, especially if you're talking to investors, right? So that experience has been, over the years I've cultivated sort of a strength and being comfortable in those very uncomfortable situations where it doesn't matter.

you know, what happened or didn't happen or who didn't get X, Y, and Z L N O P or who was sick or whatever. It's like the numbers on the paper or the numbers of the paper, right? You, you need to get there. And, through those experiences, I've had to figure out a way to cultivate that performance within my team and the teams that I lead, the teams that I work with. And, what I have found is that.

Adrienne Garland (21:41.006)
Yeah.

Victoria Hajjar (22:01.966)
the attitude has to start with who you're hiring. So that's how I'm going to connect it to getting help on the team. So in your experience, right, and I know a lot of, I mean, listen, I've talked to a lot of women who have experienced the same thing with their teams where, you know, half the, you know, if they're in an environment with all women, you know, half of them will kind of step up to the plate, right? And kind of see a pressure as a challenge to rise up to the occasion.

Adrienne Garland (22:09.262)
Mm.

Adrienne Garland (22:31.278)
Yes.

Victoria Hajjar (22:31.726)
And then some people will feel victimized. And I think that that is, it's part of how we are like brought up as women. I think that, I don't think that it's, and also I think that, well, this is like a totally other topic, but I think it's also part of how millennials grew up. And, you know, I'm like an older millennial and sort of how we've been sort of assimilated into culture of what.

Adrienne Garland (22:35.118)
Yes.

Adrienne Garland (22:52.942)
Yeah.

Victoria Hajjar (22:57.262)
you know, everyone gets a gold star, everyone gets the trophy kind of thing. And then when you get into this environment where a leader or a boss or whatever is demanding something or sort of pointing to someone that's not doing, that's not working up to standards, I think it can feel very attacking. It can feel very uncomfortable. So if let's go back to the question of how do we get,

help on our team when we can't pay ourselves. Okay. because I think it's all connected. If we're in this stage where we don't have a team, there's a really practical exercise that I go through with all of the founders that I mentor to understand who we really need on our team, because that's the first step is really understanding if I was to get stuff off my plate, what would I get off my plate? And this is like a first essential exercise to go through.

Adrienne Garland (23:28.013)
Yes.

Adrienne Garland (23:51.662)
Hmm.

Victoria Hajjar (23:55.566)
because I think that we tend to have this like all or nothing attitude when it comes to like hiring people or whatever. And the practical reality is that we can get help in our business for a very, very small investment. And oftentimes that investment is going to help us where the idea is that that investment needs to help us to, there has to be ROI in that. And then when you're first getting help from, when you're first getting help in your business,

Adrienne Garland (24:11.214)
Mm.

Adrienne Garland (24:19.502)
Yes.

Victoria Hajjar (24:25.23)
those people that are helping you, they're not, they don't have an ROI in themselves because the ROI is unlocking your time to focus on your highest level tasks, which are usually sales and marketing, right? And so the first step is really, and I have a process in my Excel or the first step is we go through kind of a time audit, right? And so what I would suggest to anyone that's in this moment,

Because marketing is usually the piece that takes up the most time for founders, right? It's the thing that occupies ourselves, right? And maybe that it's sales and marketing, maybe it's networking or whatever, but that's the piece that moves the needle, right? And so I would say first is doing a time audit for, I mean, one week, really documenting what you're working on each hour of the day, right? And putting it into a Google, I do this periodically and I just...

Adrienne Garland (24:58.286)
Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria Hajjar (25:22.638)
color code different activities into my Google Calendar. So when I open up the calendar at the end of the week, I can see in a color coded way, I spent this much time on these types of tasks. So it's like, if it's administrative, like sending invoices or clearing your inbox, you can color that one way. If it's like content creation, you can color it one way. If it's like engaging on social media, if it's actually face to face with clients, you kind of want to do an audit of what you spend your time on. And...

I also want you to think about what are the sales activities that you're doing. So are you getting on sales calls? Are you doing something in order to produce sales calls? Right? And this is, I'm talking to a service based business here, right? In a product based business that could look like, what are the activities that you're doing in order to bring, you know, make sure people are coming to your website, right? Or know about your brand or how are you marketing your product?

Adrienne Garland (26:05.326)
Yeah.

Yep.

Victoria Hajjar (26:20.75)
So you want to really understand in these task lists that you're creating and this audit that you're doing, what are the pieces of the puzzle that essentially need you? No one else can do it. And what are the pieces that really don't need you? Anyone can do it. Like an assistant can do it. And you can start with literally two hours a week. You can go onto Fiverr, you can go onto Upwork.

Adrienne Garland (26:35.246)
Yeah.

Victoria Hajjar (26:45.998)
And you, you can, or you can look into a virtual assistant. There's plenty of very affordable options, but the idea is that you need the velocity by which you're bringing money into your business is going to supersede your costs. So you have to have an understanding of what your costs are. Right. but I think that it's mission critical that you pay yourself first, even to something very, very small, and then grow it from there.

And I think a lot of times this idea of what can I pay myself? How much does it cost? It starts with, okay, understanding your expenses, right? Understanding that income and then doing that time audit. And that's going to give you a lot of information. But if you're not making enough money to pay yourself, it's because you're not focused enough on those revenue generating activities. And so that first investment is going to be, how can I get some of these?

Adrienne Garland (27:29.934)
Hmm.

Adrienne Garland (27:38.254)
Yeah.

Victoria Hajjar (27:42.542)
non -critical things off my plate, which a lot of times it's like inbox, administrative stuff. It could be even like, you know, posting on social media or helping to create some of the content, just assisting with the content creation and really starting small. And then what I find is when you have that responsibility, it really helps you think in a different way. Because if you're like, man, I got to pay this person.

Adrienne Garland (28:09.198)
Mm.

Victoria Hajjar (28:11.886)
it puts a little bit of fire and pressure under you that also unlocks different ways of thinking, you know?

Adrienne Garland (28:15.214)
Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (28:19.886)
Yeah. I love how this all ties back to mindset as well because everything that you're describing, you're putting yourself into a position of leadership and you're making decisions that are logic -based and in black and white or color, however you kind of look at that. And you're saying, okay, I am in command and control of my...

schedule and what it is that I'm doing and how can I best execute what needs to be executed for my business. It's a different, it's a shift in mindset from I'm a founder, my God, I have to do everything. I'm so overwhelmed to, okay, how can I change this outcome? And as you're talking, I'm thinking to myself, that is really what is needed.

you know, fundamentally, in order to go from six figures to seven figures. It's who you are.

Victoria Hajjar (29:23.726)
100%. I want to give everyone listening a gift because this was a huge gift that I got just recently that really crystallized things. So I have this opportunity in my one -on -one consulting business, which I, I so lucky to only, only serve a very few amount of clients in this way.

And mostly it's like information gathering. So I can share it with my cohort members, my accelerator. But most recently, I've had the privilege to work hand in hand with, I think one of the country's most successful female entrepreneurs, Senira Madani. She built a billion dollar unicorn business with Stacks, which is a payment processor, and she's based here in Florida. And having the experience and being able to work with her hand in hand and be on her team, like...

Adrienne Garland (30:05.55)
Hmm.

Victoria Hajjar (30:19.566)
One of the things that I really have done over this time working with her is try to understand her mindset. And a couple months ago, we were working through a campaign and we had obviously targets for the campaign, sales targets for the campaign. And in the beginning of launching the campaign, it wasn't going as expected, right? It wasn't performing as well and it didn't look like we were gonna reach a target.

Adrienne Garland (30:26.286)
Hmm.

Victoria Hajjar (30:45.582)
And I remember having a conversation with her and this is where the pressure comes in, right? She's, and the mindset, the mindset piece was, I don't miss targets. I don't miss it. And it wasn't unkind. It was matter of fact. I don't miss targets. We don't miss targets. And I remember internalizing that and I was like, I don't miss targets. I think this is the most critical piece for any female, any entrepreneur, right?

Adrienne Garland (30:55.182)
Mmm.

Adrienne Garland (30:59.47)
Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (31:10.702)
Hmm.

Victoria Hajjar (31:14.894)
is that you are going to set a goal, set a target for yourself and the mindset you've decided already that this is what I'm going to achieve. I don't, I don't miss my goal. I don't miss my target. And you have to put that pressure on yourself. And you can see how having that mindset and that attitude, that's going to affect how you show up with your teams. Now, I want to say that that we ended up doubling our, our, our production for that, for that promotion.

Adrienne Garland (31:30.254)
Mm.

Adrienne Garland (31:44.014)
my god.

Victoria Hajjar (31:44.75)
We doubled our target and it was, I a hundred percent believe it was because now think of it. She's my client, right? I'm, I'm essentially on her team, right? She put that pressure on me and I want everyone listening to this. I did not leave that meeting with the idea of like, how, you know, how dare she, or we're doing so hard, but this person was sick or just because this, this, you know, this technical piece isn't working. No, that I went to it with the attitude of like,

I'm going to rise to the challenge. I'm going to take on that mindset and I'm going to make it work no matter what. And that's what we all need to succeed in business. That's that six to seven, seven to eight, eight to nine figure founder mindset. And it was such a gift. And I think that is when we say like, yes, we can bring kindness, we bring support, we nurture our teams. And the most important thing we can do is cultivate a strong team that has a very strong connection, right? But.

Adrienne Garland (32:20.43)
Hmm. Gosh.

Victoria Hajjar (32:44.238)
we cannot dismiss the fact that we need to cultivate a high performing team in order to reach these ambitious goals we have for ourselves. And so practically it's like, I love the practice of having a goal and having specific metrics to measure yourself against. And the reason is because the biggest gift you can give yourself is to not hit the goals that you put to yourself and have a moment of frustration where you think to yourself and you talk with your team.

Adrienne Garland (32:52.078)
Yeah.

Victoria Hajjar (33:12.782)
And even if it's just one person working with you, a virtual assistant, one hour a week, you sit there and you brainstorm and you're like, how the hell are we gonna get to this? How are we gonna get to this? Because it's through that line of questioning that's going to actually get us to where we need to go. The problem is, is that we don't go through that process most of us, especially us, like working alone in our homes, being our own bosses.

Adrienne Garland (33:21.87)
Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (33:25.838)
Mm.

Adrienne Garland (33:39.31)
Yeah.

Victoria Hajjar (33:41.966)
But we have to go through those motions. We have to go through those motions of creating the goals, putting real numbers down on paper and checking in with them every single week, really. I check in every single week for my business. I call it a CEO date with myself every Monday where I look at those things and if I'm not reaching a target, I have that mindset of I don't miss targets. And this has been so beautiful.

Adrienne Garland (33:52.91)
Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (34:05.07)
Hmm.

Victoria Hajjar (34:08.174)
to stretch your mind and get more creative on who do I need? How am I gonna bring this in? And it's really this idea of committing to your own success. Does that resonate? Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (34:19.47)
Yeah, ugh. This is such, yes, this is gold. It really is. And it's growth mindset plus grit, you know, plus commitment to yourself, which is everything that you said. And I do think that you need,

Victoria Hajjar (34:27.886)
Yeah, thanks.

Adrienne Garland (34:48.782)
that frustration piece to stop you because it gives you the opportunity to say what's working, what's not working. And I do think that it is important even if you are a solo entrepreneur and even if you don't have anybody working for you to even reach out to people that are in your community or in your network like I'm really struggling here because we can only

Victoria Hajjar (34:54.606)
Yeah, exactly.

Adrienne Garland (35:17.934)
see what we can see. The other piece that I wanted to throw into my little equation there that I blanked on for a second was design thinking, right? So design thinking is all about, okay, you know, what are all the different options? What can we do? What can we experiment with? What, you know, let's look at things from a completely different perspective and see if we can unlock something. And I agree with you. I don't.

Victoria Hajjar (35:29.39)
Absolutely.

Adrienne Garland (35:48.462)
I don't like to make sweeping statements and I always do, but I don't know that women do this. I think that what happens sometimes is we fall into a little bit of self pity and I don't mean that in a bad way. I do it myself, believe me. I just think because we have so much responsibility for like,

Victoria Hajjar (35:59.182)
Mm.

Victoria Hajjar (36:12.11)
of that future.

Adrienne Garland (36:15.726)
every single thing in our lives and our kids lives and our husband's lives and our partner's lives and everything that we're just tired. You know, I think we're just freaking tired. And men don't necessarily have that, you know.

Victoria Hajjar (36:24.366)
Yes, absolutely. Yes, exactly. But I have to tell you, yeah. Well, and I think that like, this is why, like this essential practice of setting goals, setting targets and checking in with them periodically is like the practice that you need. So oftentimes, you know,

Adrienne Garland (36:48.75)
Yeah. Yes.

Victoria Hajjar (36:51.374)
I'm extremely scatterbrained, right? I've got two kids. I'm, you know, definitely have ADHD like all of us these days. Like, and so I think that the first person we need to learn to lead is ourselves, like hands down. And what also is, and I always like to equate this with like, if you're trying to get healthy, right? If you're trying to get healthy, but you have a bunch of junk in your house, you're making it so much more difficult for yourself, right?

Adrienne Garland (36:58.25)
Yep.

Adrienne Garland (37:05.55)
yeah.

Adrienne Garland (37:20.654)
Yeah.

Victoria Hajjar (37:21.006)
If you're an entrepreneur and you do not have systems that you follow or your days planned out or your goals planned out, you also are setting yourself up for failure. Like you need to, when you sit down at your desk, have a plan and have your marching orders because it's, it's all of us, all of our tendencies to get distracted. And we do have so much on our minds and all this stuff. So, but I can tell you there's, there's two.

Adrienne Garland (37:36.11)
Yeah. Yeah.

Victoria Hajjar (37:49.55)
things that I've implemented in my life that have been absolutely game changing. The first is on the mindset piece. Absolutely get into rooms where people are doing what you want to do and have achieved more than you because in order to want to hold yourself accountable, you need to see that it's possible because otherwise you're like, but why not? That's never going to happen for me. It doesn't matter. No, you need to see.

evidence of others that are where you want to be and that that has happened for them and that could look like joining conferences like your conference right or getting into masterminds or whatever but interacting with women that have achieved great things that are super ambitious. The next thing is one thing that I've done like if you let's say that you really are in this beginning and you're not not ready to invest in getting things off your plate and getting help.

Adrienne Garland (38:22.03)
Mm.

Adrienne Garland (38:33.294)
Hmm.

Victoria Hajjar (38:44.846)
I think the first way that you can start sort of leading yourself is to get an accountability partner. So through conferences, through masterminds that I've been in and met these other ambitious women, I've cultivated friendships with women that we, like my business bestie, we do a weekly accountability call every single week, no fail. If we're like tied up with kids or something's happening, we do.

something asynchronous on WhatsApp or whatever. But we always check in with each other and hold ourselves, each other accountable. And I've done this for years and I've had different accountability partners through the years. You have to find someone that is going to take it seriously, but it can be a game changer for step one, which is leading yourself. Cause it's gonna be difficult for you to get any help in your business until you understand how to lead yourself.

Adrienne Garland (39:34.03)
Mm.

Victoria Hajjar (39:41.294)
And what do you do in that accountability meeting? You check in with your goals for yourself and your KPIs for yourself. And even if you don't know how you're good, like what those goals should be or whatever, it's like, Hey, I'm just going to read you what my goals are each week. I'm going to show you my most important statistics, which probably is like, you know, my email list growth and how many sales calls I've made or my email list growth and how many sales I've made.

Adrienne Garland (39:47.182)
Mm.

Victoria Hajjar (40:07.022)
just check in with them every week. And even if you feel uncomfortable and you don't know what to do next, the mere practice of showing up every week with someone else and looking at it, starts to unlock that stuff. Like again, back to that uncomfortable feeling. It's like you just keep showing up and things will come to you. You know?

Adrienne Garland (40:18.198)
Mmm. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just like going to the gym. You're not going to go in and lift a 20 -pound weight on day one. But if you start with five and up it to seven and a half and keep going, that 20 pounds is not so far away. And that is exactly what we need to do. I do agree with you that we need to build those muscles. Your advice?

Victoria Hajjar (40:30.414)
Yes.

Victoria Hajjar (40:35.31)
Right.

Victoria Hajjar (40:41.934)
Exactly.

Adrienne Garland (40:52.078)
is so practical, it's so spot on. And I love the fact that we, it's like we need to take it all and commit to ourselves. That is also, I think, one of the biggest shifts because we're so other focused. So it's like, let's rein that back in.

you know, stand in our power for how powerful we are. I mean, my God. And claim it and then commit to us instead of committing to helping every single other person under the sun and the person that you see out on the street. And yeah, so much of what you have said today like hits me so hard and I really hope...

Victoria Hajjar (41:40.942)
Absolutely, 100%.

Adrienne Garland (41:49.87)
that it hits everybody that's listening as hard as it is hitting me. I needed to speak to you today. This was so good. my gosh.

Victoria Hajjar (42:00.526)
I'm so happy. I'm so happy because it is my mission. Like I think that we all like especially when we're starting in entrepreneurship like well, I feel like it always feels like an uphill battle, right? So I think that you know me I love the idea that I that I have put myself into these situations with Really like been able to get into the rooms with just massively successful founders and take these nuggets back

to the rest of us, right? On how it works. But the last piece I want to really bring home too is that even with eight and nine figure founders that I've had the honor to work hand in hand with, I will tell you, I always go into those situations as a team member expecting that that person is gonna have all the answers. And the one thing I can tell you absolutely,

Adrienne Garland (42:30.638)
yeah.

Victoria Hajjar (42:58.542)
And this is why it also goes back to mindset too. They don't have all the answers. They don't. And I think that that's, we go and we kind of, we're always consuming, right? And I'm listening to podcasts all the time. I'm always learning, but we come to this idea that like everyone else knows better than us. And we, and there's something that they all figured out that we did it, right? And the actual truth is, is that,

Adrienne Garland (43:03.47)
No. No. They don't.

Victoria Hajjar (43:29.262)
The key is just keep moving forward, keep showing up and trust that you're going to learn and grow and keep going. And that's the process for everyone. Everyone. You know? Yeah.

Adrienne Garland (43:33.71)
Yes.

Adrienne Garland (43:40.878)
Yeah, such good stuff. How can people join your incubator, get in touch with you, bring you into their lives?

Victoria Hajjar (43:47.758)
Thank you so much. Yes. So if you, I have some really great resources for you, right? So marketing is overwhelming, right? Is the piece that gives the most overwhelmed to founders. So my company, Ugly Ventures, the aim of our mission is really to take all of those ugly pieces of business, which usually let's face it, have a lot to do with marketing and turn them into something beautiful, which are...

beautiful marketing systems, but more importantly, giving you the confidence to lead your marketing confidently. And so in order to start there, I created a free guide that you guys can go ahead and grab at Ugly Ventures and it's ugly with an I. So it's U -G -L -I -B -E -N -T -U -R -E -S, uglyventures .com, backslash overwhelm. And I have a guide on how to end marketing overwhelm. So you can start today with sort of creating your most

Adrienne Garland (44:24.718)
Yes.

Victoria Hajjar (44:45.838)
core fundamental marketing systems. So you can start stepping back a little bit and having that high level view of everything that's going on for your marketing and in turn what's going on for your sales and kind of get yourself out of the weeds. Cause that's really the first step, especially when it comes to organizing your marketing. So uglyventures .com backslash overwhelm. And then from there, there's all my social links and stuff like that. I like to hang out primarily on LinkedIn and you can always reach me there, DM me. Ask me questions, I would love to hear from you.

Adrienne Garland (45:18.126)
Amazing. Well, I know that I, as soon as we're done here, I am going to go download that free resource and fill that information out. I just, I appreciate you so much. I loved our conversation today. I know our audience is going to take away so much from it. So thank you so much for everything today, Victoria.

Victoria Hajjar (45:36.846)
Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful day!