Is the mindset that got you here now holding you back?

In this week's episode, we explore a fascinating distinction a client of mine made about seeing herself as an "underdog" rather than a "winning horse." This conversation spurred me to reflect on when entrepreneurs need to evolve their identity to match their ambitions and current reality.

Summary

After a thought provoking conversation with a client who mentioned she identified as the underdog, we get into the psychology behind two mindsets that shape how entrepreneurs and leaders show up. Drawing from stories of entrepreneurs and business titans, what made them successful being the same thing that led to their fall, this episode reveals both the strengths and limitations of the underdog and winning horse mentalities.

Key Takeaways:

The Underdog Mindset

The Winning Horse Mindset

Episode Highlights:

[00:00] Introduction [02:15] The client conversation that sparked this episode [03:45] Stories of famous underdogs including Jim Carrey and J.K. Rowling [05:30] Understanding the underdog mindset and its fuel [07:20] The strengths underdogs possess [08:45] Exploring the winning horse mentality [10:30] Tom Brady on consistency versus being special [12:00] The shadow side of being an underdog [14:30] When winning horses stop taking risks [16:00] The Kodak and Blockbuster cautionary tales [17:30] Your homework assignment to identify your current mindset [19:00] How changing your mindset changes your decisions [20:45] The power of believing you're in demand [22:00] Visionary Mindset Program invitation

Memorable Quotes:

"You don't need to be special. You need to be what most people aren't: consistent, determined, and willing to work hard." - Tom Brady (referenced in episode)

"Believing you're a winning horse or an underdog doesn't have to come from the circumstances. You can see yourself as a winning horse, even when the revenue in your business is not where you want it to be."

"Seeing yourself as the winner is where you begin, and from there, you create your success."

Your Action Steps:

About This Episode:

This episode challenges entrepreneurs and business leaders to examine whether their current mindset serves their next level of growth. We break down why many successful people unknowingly sabotage their success by clinging to the underdog identity that got them started, while others play it too safe at the top. The episode provides practical tools for recognizing when you need to adopt a new perspective and embrace an identity that matches your ambitions.

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About Visionary's Pursuit:

A podcast for entrepreneurs and leaders turning bold ideas into reality. Hosted by life and business coach Carolina Zuleta, each episode provides mindset strategies, practical tools, and inspiration to help you manage yourself, your team, and your resources while pursuing your biggest visions.

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If this episode resonated with you, please subscribe to Visionary's Pursuit and leave a review. Your feedback helps other visionary leaders discover the show and join our community of ambitious entrepreneurs creating exceptional results.

A coaching friend called recently, struggling because her client hadn't achieved expected results despite perfect execution on both sides. This conversation revealed a fundamental misconception that plagues every founder: the belief that effort should guarantee success.

We've been conditioned since school to expect proportional rewards for our work. Complete the assignments, get the grade. Meet the requirements, earn the promotion. But entrepreneurship operates on entirely different physics. You can work 80-hour weeks, follow proven formulas, invest at the right time, and still watch your business stagnate while a competitor's rushed attempt succeeds brilliantly.

This episode explores the dangerous entitlement that emerges when we believe the universe owes us results for our effort. We examine why founders oscillate between blaming the market and blaming themselves without ever questioning whether they're solving the right problem for the right people.

The work requires you to develop the ability to hold total commitment without being attached to specific outcomes. We discuss how to evaluate without connecting results to self-worth, why timing matters more than we think (those "failed" ads might convert six months later) and how to transform disappointment into data.

The entrepreneurial paradox demands we maintain steadfast commitment to outcomes while surrendering attachment to them. This means recognizing that we control our inputs while accepting we don't control the universe's response to them.

Your business will not grow how you think it should. Not every strategy will deliver fair results. But when you accept this uncertainty while maintaining commitment to creating then iterating, you develop more and more resilience and spend less time fighting reality.

Enrollment is now open for The Visionary Mindset Program!!
Click here to set up a call with me: carozuleta.com/visionary

Every founder has an unconscious formula for success that got them where they are today. It just so happens to also be the thing preventing you from reaching your next level.

In her book, "The Last Word on Power," Tracy Goss defines The Winning Strategy as follows: " A winning strategy is a lifelong unconscious formula for achieving success. You did not design the winning strategy. It designed you as a human being and as a leader, it is the source of your success, and at the same time, the source of your limitations, it defines your reality, your way of being, and your way of thinking."

Your winning strategy shapes you as a leader. It determines what you listen for, how you act and what you expect in return.

Maybe you're the person who always delivers what's needed without being asked... or the one who seeks the truth to stay safe... or the highly productive founder who moves at a breakneck speed. 

Yeah, these strategies helped you win in the past but they come with a cost and may very well be the reason you hit a ceiling. 

Those who deliver extra work without being asked may be too focused on pleasing others to set boundaries for themselves. Those who read between the lines to find what feels true may not take the risks necessary to scale their company. Or, those who move fast and push hard may not be able to relate to the methodical personalities on their teams or burn themselves out. 

And no. The solution to overcoming your winning strategy is not to find another one. Every strategy has limitations.

Instead, we need to create a context so big that no single strategy can define us.

This means you must constantly reinvent yourself and challenge your thinking to discover your untapped potential.

Key takeaways from the episode:

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:
The Visionary Mindset Program is now open for enrollment! Go to carozuleta.com/visionary to learn more!

In this episode, we examine the three critical visibility mistakes that cost founders time, money and customers, and explore the deeper beliefs driving these costly decisions.

Through insights from a training I led last week on Visibility, we uncover why founders spray and pray with their content, chase vanity metrics instead of revenue and hide behind perfectionism.

Effective marketing has nothing to do with being everywhere or being perfect. It's about understanding your customers deeply enough to speak directly to their needs, consistently showing up where they actually are and having the courage to be seen before you feel ready.

We explore why your existing subscribers are enough to build your business, how one mentor generates $70 million annually with virtually no social media presence and why the language that connects with customers only emerges through iteration and conversation, never through endless perfecting in isolation.

The brands winning today are those most obsessed with serving their clients' actual needs.

Key takeaways: Why believing you need to be everywhere creates scattered, ineffective content. How obsessing over hashtags and algorithms before clarifying your message guarantees engagement without revenue. Why waiting for the perfect logo, website, or brand is sophisticated procrastination. The simple shift that transforms broadcasting to imaginary masses into genuine connection with real people.

Special announcement: Founder Consultation Week is here! Five full days of free one-hour breakthrough sessions for founders ready to transform what's keeping them stuck. Limited spots available. Book your consultation here: https://calendly.com/carolinazuleta/founder-consultation-week

One year ago today, we launched this podcast with a simple message: Dream Big. In this anniversary episode, we explore why the mythology of the solo entrepreneur is holding you back and how blind spots shape every founder's journey.

I share the story of a tech founder who lost everything in the dotcom crash and rebuilt his company with a radically different approach, ultimately selling for millions. This time around, he hired four advisors to help him see what he couldn't see alone. His coach's observation that he was "spending his own money," being too emotionally enmeshed with his business to make strategic decisions, transformed how he approached risk and investment.

We cover why "figuring it out on your own" becomes the exact bottleneck preventing growth and discuss the hidden costs of independence beyond just money: time spent learning expensive lessons, energy drained by invisible patterns, missed opportunities, and strained relationships.

Through examples from Diana Nyad's "solo" swim from Cuba to Florida and the support teams behind elite athletes, we see how no significant achievement is truly solo.

The key insight is that your blind spots aren't character flaws but the inevitable result of being inside your own psychology. The founders who accelerate past their limitations invest in outside perspectives and build teams of advisors who see what they cannot.

As the tech founder told me, "Experience is a great teacher, but it's damn expensive."

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If you found value in this episode, please subscribe, follow and leave a rating. It really helps to spread this message to more visionary leaders like you.

Giving a child a smartphone is like asking them to carry a warm chocolate chip cookie in their hand all day without ever taking a bite.

This metaphor, shared by a school principal explaining their no-devices policy, reveals something important about how we manage attention at work. Every notification, Slack message, or "quick question" from your team is an invitation to take a bite.

We spend considerable mental energy handling these impulses, constantly deciding what can wait and what can't. While we tend to think this is a time management issue, there's more to it when we examine the neurology involved.

Our amygdala, the part of the brain always scanning for threats and opportunities, treats each incoming request as something that needs immediate resolution. It creates tension that seeks the relief of a quick solve or checked box.

Yet our prefrontal cortex, where strategic and long-range thinking happens, requires something different. It thrives in calmer spaces and can hold unresolved questions while wrestling with complex problems.

These two systems often pull us in opposite directions. The loudest problems that demand your attention are rarely the most important ones. The art of leading a company lies in knowing which problems to resolve immediately and which to sit with in service of a larger goal.

Most of us operate with a poor signal-to-noise ratio, so overwhelmed by day-to-day noise that strategic signals barely get through.

This episode covers how to create structures that protect your deepest thinking from the constant pull of your brain's need to resolve problems, including weekly reviews and scheduling strategic work in uninterrupted blocks.

We'll also address why it takes psychological strength to stay focused on commitments when immediate pressures arise, and why learning to manage attention is a skill that develops with practice.

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If you found value in this episode, please subscribe, follow and leave a rating. It really helps to spread this message to more visionary leaders like you.

In this episode, I examine a question that came up during an executive coaching session: How do you want to be remembered as a leader? This conversation led to an examination of leadership standards, the personal code of conduct that defines your baseline for leading yourself and others.

Based on work I done with founders and executives, I offer five pillars that make up a leadership standard: self-leadership, decision integrity, communication consistency, accountability, and culture modeling. The elements that make up your standard which becomes the blueprint for your company's culture.

The episode addresses factors that cause leaders to compromise their standards, including the need for approval and the erosion that occurs when exceptions become patterns. These compromises affect organizational trust and the leader's self-perception, altering company culture and performance.

You hear an approach for developing your leadership standard through self-reflection and the articulation of behavioral commitments. This framework transforms values into observable behaviors that guide decision-making and interactions.

Your leadership standard represents the minimum threshold of behavior you commit to maintaining. When leaders operate from this foundation, they create environments where opportunities and talent gravitate toward the organization.

Connect with Me!

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Subscribe to my newsletter
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Website

If you found value in this episode, please subscribe, follow and leave a rating. It really helps to spread this message to more visionary leaders like you.

If your team is frustrated because you're micromanaging details or you’re up at night fixing their work, it might be time to try on a new identity.

In this episode, I break down a challenge I see constantly with founders. As your business evolves, your identity must evolve too. Most of us cling to the identity that got us here, even when it's strangling our company's potential and that is guaranteed to create snowballing problems.

We walk through the three distinct identities every founder must navigate as they scale.

When you start, you're the doer who handles everything, knows every detail, and hustles through long hours. Your self-worth comes from checking tasks off lists and seeing tangible proof of your effort.

After you add headcount, you must become the manager and decider. This means creating space to think strategically rather than just execute while teaching others to do things your way. The time you used to spend completing tasks now goes to managing people.

Here's where most founders struggle. We think because something is clear in our minds, we can explain it quickly and save time by spending less time with employees.

The opposite is true. You need to stay close to your team, communicate everything in your brain, and develop systems so they can execute your vision. As you continue growing, you must evolve again into the visionary CEO whose value comes from casting long-term vision, embodying culture, and creating context for operations. You spend days in meetings with investors and partners, thinking in longer time horizons, far removed from the daily creation that once energized you.

Each transition requires letting your previous identity die so the next can emerge. I share the four-step process for navigating these identity upgrades and dealing with the uncomfortable emotions that come with new territory. If you're feeling like your own bottleneck or struggling with the evolution your business demands, this episode provides the framework for identity transformation that successful scaling requires.

You're hitting your goals, your business is growing, everyone may even think you have it all together. So why do you feel emotionally flat, scattered and physically depleted?

This is functional burnout.

Fresh off two weeks completely unplugged from work, we dive into the types of burnout that plague high achievers. Where you're still producing and performing but you've lost touch with things that interest you and feel generally disconnected from joy.

You may feel resentful toward clients, employees, or maybe even your own success. When colleagues suggest ways to grow your business, your first thought is "I don't have it in me."

There are two types of burnout that plague many founders: physical burnout and cynical detachment.

Physical burnout comes from neglecting your body - poor sleep, skipping meals, no breaks, sitting at your computer for 16 hours straight. Your body is literally exhausted and needs basic care.

Cynical detachment, on the other hand, can be more sneaky. It comes from the stories you tell yourself. You may feel like you’re always in reactive mode, putting out fires, telling yourself there's never enough time. You may be operating outside your values, while criticizing yourself for not doing enough. You've shut down your intuition because you have a relentless need to keep going or to achieve more.

We don't have to wait for something to break before we change. We don't need a health scare, a divorce, or a business failure to give us permission to take care of ourselves.

You'll hear about the energy audit I use with clients to identify whether burnout is physical, mental, or both. Then we tackle solutions. After all, managing your energy and recovery is a business strategy.

This episode gives you the framework to spot burnout before it breaks you and the tools to build a more sustainable way of achieving your goals.

There's a massive of difference between taking responsibility as a founder and trying to control every outcome.

This episode breaks down the distinction between control (i.e. trying to prevent mistakes by micromanaging) versus capacity (your ability to handle whatever comes without falling apart).

Does it Lonely at the top? When we start thinking we're the only ones who care, we stop communicating our expectations clearly. We skip the training or we assume people should just know. You’ll learn how to build a culture where your team is invested and why scaling your business means upgrading the way you think.

This episode gives you the mindset shifts to move from lonely leadership to having the support you deserve.