81: Alicia Diaz-Blevins: Don’t Call it a Dream, Call it a Plan
Alicia Diaz Blevins: Entrepreneur, Business Coach, Speaker and Online Course Creator
Today my special guest is Alicia Diaz, Blevins, the founder of Aldin group. Alicia is a business consultant, coach and speaker. She supports CEOs, executives and online entrepreneurs, helping them grow their businesses and make them more productive and profitable. After more than 25 years as a senior access executive for different companies in Mexico and the United States, she has spent the last three years as an online entrepreneur.
Episode Highlights
“Don’t call it a dream, call it a plan”. Learn how this inspirational quote changed her life, guiding her on her entrepreneurial journey
With discipline and hard work, how she found her niche market and empowered others to take action
The importance of finding your "Why", not giving up, and how to start your business with proper training and the right mentor
Alicia knows what truly drives companies to achieve successful results. She is the author of several online business and productivity courses, author of the e-book Digital Entrepreneurship, Nine Steps to Start Your Own Business Based on Your Talent and Your Passion and author of the e-book Guide for Successful Entrepreneurs, Five Steps to Success With a Digital Course.
Tune into this episode and be inspired to find your “Why”!
Mentioned In This Episode
Transcript:
Speaker 1 (00:01):
And today, my guest is Alicia Diaz Blevins. She is the founder of Aldin group. She's a business consultant, coach and speaker. She supports CEOs executives and later online entrepreneurs to grow their businesses and make them more productive and profitable. After more than 25 years as a senior executive for different companies in Mexico and in the United States. And the last three years as an online entrepreneur, she knows what truly drives companies to achieve successful results. She is the author of several online business and productivity courses, author of the ebook Digital Entrepreneurship, Nine Steps to Start Your Own Business Based on Your Talent and Your Passion and author of the ebook guide for Successful Entrepreneurs, Five Steps to Success with a Digital Course. Alicia, thank you so much for joining me. I'm super excited to jump in and learn a little bit more about your journey and your story as an online course creator.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Hi Destini, I am so happy to be here. Thank you. Thank you for the invitation.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
So why don't you jump right in and you can go back as far as you want and tell the audience a little bit more about your journey and how you got started.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Oh my goodness. Do we have enough time for that? Yeah. Let me tell you a little bit about how I started in this world. I used to work for corporations all my life since I was originally from Mexico. You can see my accent, right? So I am from Mexico. I was there working really, really hard in order to get to the to have a good position in the corporate world. I'm a business administrator with a master's degree in business. So I work on my life in Mexico, in the human resources and finance area. And then like 22 years ago, I moved to the States and I continue working in corporations as a consultant, as a CFO and CIO and all that stuff. But all those years I had always had the idea of creating or, or, or starting my own business.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Right. Because you work for corporations, it's wonderful to work in corporations. It's wonderful to be a leader, to be a mentor, to do different things, but it's, it's, it's not your business. It's not your own like purpose in life, right? So I work hard and I'm good money. And I like climb the ladder, the corporate ladder. And I was blessed to have great positions, but I was empty in some part of, of my life. Right. So I moved to different companies. I worked in Atlanta, I work in Austin, Texas. I moved to San Antonio to work with corporations here in San Antonio. They had their headquarters in Germany and everything went well. But one day I got to my office and there was a sign at the entrance that said, don't call it a dream, call it a plan that they actually, I took a picture of that.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
I don't know who put it there, but, but I took a picture and I said, Hm, this is so true, it was like well, at least you have always been dreaming about building your own company and do something different and follow your purpose for follow your why. Right? At that time, I had already read the book, the start with Why with your choir. And I loved it. And I said, I think that I need to start working on my own dream and little did I know that that day was going to be my last day at that company. It's like, it was weird because I was so happy in the morning and I was excited about that message. But, you know, it's like the turmoil that happens in companies and calls and conference calls and meetings and all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
And then you forget about your, your stuff. And in the afternoon, the lady that was in the president of the company asked me to meet in her office at 4:00 PM. Right. And I said, okay, did you need anything that's special? That's sounded a little bit weird to me because normally we had our meetings with the director meetings. It was in the morning and we had, I was part of the board of directors. So we had like the board of directors meeting normally at two, and that was canceled. And that these were set up at 4:00 PM. Right. So little did I know that she was just returning from her trip to Germany and, and I asked her, how your trip went she, she said, okay. But I felt her, she was a little bit nervous. And then she told me, well Alicia I only want to thank you for all your help during this situation, because we have had some, some problems in the company its like, but today
Speaker 2 (05:37):
today is your last day? And I was like, what? Like, yeah. Today is your last day? So, okay. After the shock and everything you can imagine, though, you don't expect that. And great stuff was, happening, those types of things to make this story short. It, it, I had one week to give everything, and deliver everything and organize everything in order to leave the company. Right. And after the shock, I said, okay, what should I do? And I remembered that message that I saw at the entrance; don't call it a dream, call it a plan. So I, I have always thought that things happen for a reason. So of course, as I said, after the shock and everything, I said, okay, maybe this is a good opportunity for me to start building my dream. So I said, what can I do?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
And then I started looking for different options, right. I had been a consultant with with a company. So I say, maybe some consulting. And then I been, I love teaching. I was a college professor when I was in Mexico. So I said, maybe teaching, right. But here in the States to be a professor at college degree, you know, that it's like, you have to have a doctorate. And I said, I'm not going to do a doctorate right now. So nevermind. So then I thought about, okay, what about investing in a franchise? Right. So I just started investigating about franchises and do you need to invest a lot of money? And this was not about the money, but it was something like, I didn't feel really passionate about that. Correct. So then I, you know, that Google follows you every time that you search something.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
So I guess Google, so that I was looking into opportunities to invest or to start a business or something like that, for all the research that I was doing that, of course the advertising a start coming to me. Right. So I had immediately different, different advertising from different online courses and the startups and franchises and all that stuff. And one got my attention that came from Amy Porterfield that we both know. And, and that advertising was about when she was launching at that time, her program webinars that convert. And she was mentioning that if you want to build your online business, you can do it through webinars. And then you can even earn money, when you are sleeping and help people and all that stuff. So I said, Hmm, maybe this is something that I had been looking for.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
So I joined one of her, It was an evergreen webinar at that time. I didn't know what an evergreen webinar meant, later on, I learned that is something that you have there. Like, an evergreen right, It's like, it stays there and then you can watch it at any time. And it got my attention and I watch it. And then I bought her program without knowing anything about her. I bought her program because it convinced me what she said, convinced me. And since I was looking for something like that, I got into that into the, into the online business. So that was my first first approach to online business.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
So I want to go back to the sign. I want to go back to the sign that you saw on the door, because I think it's so powerful. And I think for people who are listening to this today, if this is some, if they're searching for what to do next, whether it's starting a business or even taking their business to the next level or pivoting their business, you said you saw that sign. It said, don't call it a dream. Call it a plan. Later on that day at 4:00 PM, you were called into the office. You were laid off. And if that's not a sign from the universe, I don't know what is right. And then you started searching. May I ask what year was that?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
That was 2016, 17. I just, I lost track
Speaker 1 (10:11):
That's. Okay. So around 2016, 2017, that's when you started researching to try to figure out what you were going to do online. And I think all of us can relate when, when we start searching online, Google, Facebook, Instagram, everything's going to start sending us information or kind of showing us information that we may be interested in. So you saw this ad and then it kind of led you into you know, this online course world, you love teaching, and you sounded like it was something that you'd be interested in. Take us to the next step. In terms of you came across this, you came up with this idea, tell us about some of the next steps that you had in your journey.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah, it was pretty interesting because it's like, I, I joined that started that course. Right. That webinar to convert, and I was just starting the course when Amy Porterfield was advertising also as a partnership with Marie Forleo's B-School program. Right. So I have an MBA, you know, and then I said, this school business, school, MBA, business administration, this is piece of cake for me. Right. Because I thought, okay, so business is quite different from a traditional business that I have already more than 20 something years of experience to an online business that is also a business. So, okay. So I decided, and I joined the school and to my surprise, it was totally different. It was totally a new world. So at the beginning it was like so overwhelming. And to be honest, it's like, Oh my goodness. It's like even terms that I didn't even know what they meant.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
So it was like the pipelines and the, and the, and the funnels and the lead magnets and the landing pages and the checkout pages and all that. I mean, I felt some different things that I said, okay, okay. Wait a second, let me, let me try to figure out what's going on. So that was the beginning. And since I, I love teaching, I also love learning. And since I was in Mexico is like, you name it. I had my business degree and my master's degree. And I had some specialties because I always believe that you don't know everything. You have always, you need always to learn and to be getting your knowledge updated. Right. So I started working hard and learning and researching and did all that stuff. And then I was so happy. And so like, yes, I'm going to do this.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
So I decided I am good in productivity. I am good in getting things done and achieving goals and, and organizing my time, organizing agenda, helping people to do the same. So I said, okay, let's create a program about the about productivity. So the, thing that I do, did that I that I started, like creating my program, building everything is like, as I said, I had already taught, so I know how to create content and how to put it together and put my slides. Beautiful. And I, okay, how do I need to present these? It's like, okay, I need to get through Webinar or get through Zoom more whatever in order to, to start teaching. Right. So then I had everything ready, everything beautiful. Like the content was organized to the point that you need to take your audience from point A to point B.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
So that was perfectly done. And then okay. Time to present it to, to the public. Right. So what are the first thing that I did was it was advised to have like, what is called a beta test. So you put your program in the market and you put the program and then you test it. And then you see if, if the people is learning, they like it. You need to add some more materials or not. I went all the way on the academic field, or I even taken consideration that I had to build an audience first. I didn't realize that that needed to be done at the same time that I was working so hard creating my program. So my first, ah, ha moment or really session was when I was so happy. The program was already tested. I put it on the market and crickets, nothing happened, not even not sole right, because nobody knew who Alicia Diaz, was. Yeah. People that I had worked in their organizations knew me, but I was not trying to sell that to people that already knew me from organizations. I was putting this out in the world. And nobody knew who Alicia Diaz was. So it was a big shock for me. So that was my first aha moment in this wonderful world of online business.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
So let, let's kind of dissect that and figure out where you went from there. So you had this course you're definitely an expert in productivity. You know how to take students from point A to point B. But you launched to crickets you and then you realize, I need to build my audience too, you know, and figure out where to go from there. So what, what were your next steps? What exactly did you do?
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Yeah. So, okay. Not what I do, right? What should I do it? Right. So then I say, okay, well, do you need, first of all, you need to create something that people like, something you can get like known as an expert in your field. So you need to start putting content, no, content of value, what they call you. They teach you in this industry skill k You need to put some content to give some value. So people know what you are good at, that people know what you need to they, how they can solve a problem. And now after they see that you can help them to solve a problem. Then when you, when you present the program, now, then they say, okay, I know she has, she has taught me. Or she has given me these free content for this period of time.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
I know that she can help me. Right. So, but after that, we are already talking about a bit of time. And actually to be honest, it's like, yeah, I, I, I, I have my savings. I got some severance from the company that I was layed off, but I mean, you cannot be without an income for a good amount of time. So at that time without asking, I got an invitation to join another corporation and to be honest Destini, at that time, I was like in shock that my program didn't work the way that everybody had told me that I was going to become not a media nerd, but I was going to make a good living on this industry at the beginning. And I said, okay, this is not really giving me the good living. I am used to good, a good salary because I used to work with corporations as a high level executive. So my salary was a good salary. So I said you better take this opportunity. So
Speaker 1 (18:24):
What year was that? Alicia? What year was that? That you went back to work?
Speaker 2 (18:31):
2000, 19, 2019. So I had already like tried it for a year. No, and it didn't work the way that I wanted. So I went back to corporate. I think it was in March of 2019. And I was working another good position with a good company here in San Antonio. But again, I was, I was happy with the company. I'm not going to say I don't enjoy working in corporation because that's not true. I enjoy working with corporations. I enjoy working with this company, but it was not that I was passionate about. Right. If you it's like when they tell you, no, what could you do? Even if you will not be paid. And that's, that's what happens to me. I love teaching. I love helping people. I love making a difference in other peoples life. I love seeing somebody when they tell me, Alicia, thank you so much. What you taught me really has changed my life. That's what I love doing. So I work in that corporation for a year and a half, but at the same time I was building continue building my company. I never stopped. So what I used to do is I used to work in the morning. I don't know. You have read the book the miracle morning.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
I haven't, I've never heard of it.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
It's a beautiful book. And it talks about to create some habits in order for you to be more productive and get better results is for It's, it's a beautiful book that I strongly recommend it. Any, anybody to read it. But in summary, what it tells you is to wake up one hour early in order to focus on yourself. Now it gives you some advice about like meditation and exercise and, and putting together the things that you have to do during the day etc, etc, . So what I did is I added two hours instead of one, I added two hours. So I used to wake up at 4:00 AM to do my routine and also to work on my business. So I was working on my business from 4:00 AM to 6:00 AM every day, get ready to go, to, to work, go to work, come back and sometimes in the afternoons I was doing, also some work to try to build my company at the same time that I was also working with the company and earning some money so I did that for like a year and a half.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
And so that's, that's a heavy schedule. How did you feel during that time? Were you burned out? Was it a lot for you?
Speaker 2 (21:23):
No, no, it was, I was burned out to be honest because it was, it was hard. I mean, and the problem also was that this company was like an hour away from where I live. So it was a two hour commute. That, to be honest, that also helped me to, to get more like as I said, I am a avid learning, so I'm not the type of person that I am driving long distances without doing anything. So normally I used to listen to podcasts or listen to, to audiobooks or something, trying to get more, more knowledge. So those two hours were not like wasted, but yeah, I mean, waking up at 4:00 AM working until six, getting ready, go to work, work from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, come back home and sometimes work in the afternoon. Yeah. It was not easy. And when did you leave that firm? I left. I left in 2020, right after the pandemic. It started, it was in September, August or September, 2020.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
And just, it just so folks know we are recording this at the end of April, 2021. It's not going to be airing until later. So you've had maybe, you know, a little over six months, right. Since you've left there to kind of refocus your energy back on your business and you recently launched your membership program. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about that?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Yeah. Yeah. So, so, yeah, so after all that time that I talked to my husband and actually he was so supportive because he said, you know, you're killing yourself and I don't see you happy. So what really makes you happy? And I told him, I would like to come back to focus on my, on my business because I do believe even though I have a struggle trying to make it work, I love it. And the results is like small result that I have had have been good, but, but not, not to the point, like to live only out of that right at the beginning. So, so we, we just launched a membership, I love it. I mean, we have had already some of where I already got our founding members. So we are so excited about that. And actually it's no longer in productivity and, and that was something interesting that happened with the pandemic that a lot of people ask us, okay, Hey, how are you doing your online business can you teach us how to do an online business.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
Because by that time we were already, we don't have thousands of followers, but we have already an audience that was following us. It's like, I have been able to build a group of followers of more than 10,000 people that we have been able to attract with our, with our webinars, our masterclass and, and with posting social media and all that stuff. It's like, we don't have thousands of thousands of followers in our session media, but we have had really good amount of people that have joined us in our master class, and our webinars and different things and all the messages that I have received. Thank you. And I have moments and all that stuff. That's what really makes my my life. Right. So we have, we're seeing you know, because we do this in Spanish.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
So it's for another, it's a different culture. The Hispanic culture was really behind on these online business. The pandemic really like pushed it, you cannot imagine how much. To tell you the truth, when we started in 2016, 17 at the beginning, we used to do our masterclasses or our webinars through Zoom, and a lot of people didn't attend because they didn't want to download the app or didn't, they didn't know how Zoom worked. Now, even grandma has the Zoom app. It changed! It changed a lot. So, so the hispanic culture jumped from zero knowledge or little bit of usage of online business to voom, incredible opportunity. So a lot of people were asking us, it's like, how, how are you doing this? How did you create your content? How did you organize how to, what to post, how did you do the landing pages and all that stuff? So we said, okay, let's, let's create a program in order to help the hispanic community to learn that right, because there are a lot of programs in the market, but they are pretty expensive. So a lot of people cannot afford to pay this amount of money and more in Hispanic community. So we built that small program that was called the ABC of an Online Business in the Spanish its called the
Speaker 2 (26:41):
And out of that a lot of people ask us to have more like help more, more in the monthly basis or more like frequent. So we created our membership that is Staff Club that is said digital entrepreneurs club. So in the Spanish, [inaudible] where we help people to go step by step to build a business it's lonely but its steady not to kill themselves, not to, to be like what I am going to do next. And then we, we are having good results its not, I am not a millionaire. I don't want to be a millionaire. Yeah, of course I make good money, why not. But our main interest is to be able to help people to build their, their, their online business without breaking the bank.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
And what I'm hearing from your story Alicia is a couple of things. Number one, you're a continual learner. You're not, you, you don't give up and think about if you had given up and this whole pandemic thing happened, and you didn't know that this market was out there that needed your help. That was prime to learn about how online business works. So I think that's fantastic. So, and I love the niche that you have. I think this is a great niche to serve, and you're the perfect person to serve them with it. So I love, I love all that. Tell us a little bit specifically about how you launched. Did you use a challenge? Did you use a webinar and tell us a little bit about how all of that worked and how, how did you get people on your webinar? Was it from your list? Did you do ads or what did you do? Exactly.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Yeah we do different things and we have tried different launch type of launches. One of the ones that I really love doing, are live launches or challenges, because I really like the interaction with the people on my Facebook group. So I have a Facebook group that is called [inaudible] like like there to, to, to, to start the business, you can translate it, it doesn't, it doesn't translate exactly, but that's more or less, the idea is like for you to there to go on and jump and, and, and, and get, get going into the online business. So we teach them because a lot of people tell us, like what I am going to teach. I am not a guru. I am not an expert. So we teach them. First of all, we work in their passion for them to look at their passion, their why, what are the things that really, really drives them.
New Speaker (29:30):
and then from there, I, we work in what I call the pyramid of knowledge, where we show them that they don't need to be a guru or an expert in order to be able to teach somebody that you can teach somebody that is below the level of experience or knowledge that you have. And I use like the Excel no, I am not master, I don't master Excel. What, I'm pretty good at doing five or tables. And we look up some of the stuff so I can teach anybody that is below my level of knowledge and experience. And of course, I'm going to learn from somebody that is above my level, that's experienced, but do you have a lot of market and opportunity to teach different things, different knowledge, experience, and even hobbies that you have. And I show them about a lot of people that I know friends of mine even teach us everything that are teaching or there's like sewing, painting.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
And like you name it is to how to do homeschooling that right now great need for a lot of people and taxes, accounting or different things. So I work with them on, on kind of a challenge in order to, to teach them how to do that. And after that, of course, I present my program. They, the last ones that we have done have been, since this is a low ticket program we have done more like a webinar in order for, in an hour, an hour and a half. You teach them all that stuff. They see the possibility. And then they would present a program. And right now we have a one of our first founding members for, for the membership. We just launched it like a week ago. And we are starting we just did another type of launch on Tuesday, but we have some technical difficulties that I didn't know about that may happen, and they did happen.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
So, as you can see, we are still learning. No, it's like, I, I, I found out that the emails that I sent to my audience, with a link to join our webinar didn't get to them because we were just seeing a software provider that it looks that the way that they send the messages, it goes to, to their spam from there. And I was not seeing that because I use another, another service provider in order to send the regular stuff, what I wanted, like this provider to send the, the, the, the personalized link directly to the people. So then I could get some statistics, right. And I then i didn't realized that those emails were not being opened, because normally you have your own email there in order to tell that you are receiving. And I was receiving information when I saw that I had 900 people register for my webinar and only about 30 show up, but were only 15 live. I said, what happened here, normally in this industry, the percentage of people that shows up is around 30% of your list. So I was expecting 300 people joining my, my webinar and to my surprise, I only had 30 and I was like what happened here
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Right.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Yeah. Unfortunately, those tech issues, they happen a lot. So let me ask you this. What do you see as next steps in your, for your business in 2021?
Speaker 2 (33:23):
It's like, there are different things that I want to do is like we want to continue with our membership and the membership right now. This business, I built it. I failed to mention that this business, I, I built it with my nephews and it's a family business. So I want, we want my nephew to, be kind of like the face of the membership, and of course I'll be helping in the background and, and of course teaching and other stuff, what I want to go back to my passion and what I really love doing that is teaching productivity, leadership, mentoring because I think that I am good at that from all my years in corporation. So I am starting also a program that is it doesn't have an exact translation in English, but it's called high, high impact mentor or high impact mentoree that is, is for professionals that executives managers to be a high impact mentor, not only for their own the, the people that report to them, but also that they can build a side job being a mentor, and then starting, I it's to my passion that I don't want them to live the same situation that I lived, that you are working for the company and the company, or until they feel that you are needed there, they treat you well.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
But suddenly they decide they don't, they don't no longer need you. And they say goodbye to you because of that. And you are in the middle of nowhere, not knowing what to do. So I want to work with executives, managers, directors leaders, in order to help them start their own business without leaving their job getting them a strong enough, not waking up at 4 am in the morning as I used to do, but build it at the same time. So when they are ready, then they can leave their corporate job. And then they can start their own business.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
I love that. And I have one last question for you. You've gone through a lot since you saw that sign on the door that said, don't call it a dream, call it a plan back in 2016. What advice do you have for other online course creators and entrepreneurs out there?
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Oh, I have so many, one don't give up. Don't give up. It's the one important one, because you will always, always, always have problems. And that is not only in the online business is in life, right? It's like you would encounter challenge and you will have problems. And the important thing is that you have your Why there. Why are you doing this? To me, my why is to be able to help people is to be able to change lives. So quiting our job, assume all the crazy stuff is not going to go in my way. So if I have my why clear, then all those hiccups, the only thing that I do is lesson learned to me, see what happened is like like take this step in order to see how you can fix it and move on. And that's it.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
So that would be one of my main, like, messages is don't give up, have clear, you're why. So any challenge that you can have, you come pass through that. So that is one thing. And the other thing is that if you are in corporate and, and you, you or you are thinking about starting your own business is start now, start now and start preparing yourself is get training, get a good mentor, a good coach, good advice or somebody that has already gone through all these stuff that has already learned the pathway that hustle already like four, 10 times and broken their arms and all that stuff. Learn, get ready, prepare, do things, and start doing things from, from now. So when you are ready to say, okay, I'm ready now. Then you start your online business, but you already built it. You already built this structure. You already have like the, the solid structure in order to start teaching or mentoring or coaching or doing consulting. So that could be my two main advises don't give up and they start now.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
I love them both. I love them both. So where can people find you? They can find me.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
I think everywhere, basically LinkedIn, I have my Facebook page, that is Alicia Diaz Blevins, I have my Instagram page Alicia Diaz I have my company that is held Aldin consulting group, and that I try to be active giving, giving content of value every single day. So you can reach me there and you can always reach me through any of these social media platforms.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
And I will make sure that those links are in the show notes. So people know where they can find you. Alicia, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your story. I'm so glad you saw that quote on the door that day and all of these events led us together. So thank you for sharing.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Thank you so much for having me Destini. Thanks.