Fascinating Women

Virginia Muzquiz - Educator - Philanthropist-Brilliant Woman-Entrepreneur

May 01, 2020 Virginia Muzquiz Season 1 Episode 12
Fascinating Women
Virginia Muzquiz - Educator - Philanthropist-Brilliant Woman-Entrepreneur
Show Notes Transcript

Virginia Muzquiz is a pretty bold woman. You get struck by her over the top enthusiasm, energy, and optimism. It is a rush talking to her in person. She easily gets into deep, questioning debates. Her honesty about her background, her childhood that while shaky shaped her approach to life and people.

She is pretty distinguished adding to that is her philanthropy on two fronts. First her own substantial support of Seeds of Blessing to her programs where she teaches adding a charity to every business budgeting mix.

She has earned Doctorates, a Masters degree, with her biggest business legacy is the massive number of business owners she has coached to impressive success.

Of course, close to her heart is her children which she explains in humorous detail they are also her source of a great education.

Her humor, bluntness, clear-eyed view of the world transforms our conversation.

You can reach her here:
Virginia Muzquiz
Chief Connection Officer at Master Connectors
https://www.linkedin.com/in/virginiamuzquiz/
https://masterconnectors.com
(314) 304-5409
virginia@masterconnectors.com

About Mark Laurie - Host.
Mark has been transforming how women see themselves, enlarging their sense of sexy, expanding their confidence in an exciting adventure that is transformational photography. 
http://innerspiritphotography.com

Sound Production by 
Lee Ellis  - myofficemedia@gmail.com

Mark Laurie:   0:03
you're listening to fascinating women with Mark Laurie and now Mark Laurie. Hello, everyone. Today I have Virginia and I've never quite mastered your last name Virginia.

Virginia Muzquiz:   0:15
Okay, well, you're from Canada, which means you have these animals around you. You know what a moose is right. Now picture one skiing, moose, moose skis, skis moose skis across the tundra.

Mark Laurie:   0:29
That is wonderful. I've never thought of it that way. I have known Virginia. For about a year now, I guess

Virginia Muzquiz:   0:36
about that. Yeah.

Mark Laurie:   0:37
And she had called her a force of nature with her positive vision of how the world should. That's much work, but how people's potential should not be squandered. Amen. And she's an amazing storyteller. That was the first thing that captured me, was  we were at this meeting, and some things mixed up. It's everywhere. Go to his room and we all trucked up there. And she mesmerized us with this amazing story. And I got to know this lady, This is really a cool lady and my instincts were proven right. She is amazing. She's got more depth to her. You've been trained as an educator.

Virginia Muzquiz:   1:14
yes, that's my  first love is definitely education. I started educating stuffed animals when I was five. How did  that go. It was great. I had the smartest teddy bears in New Jersey in the whole state. Like they won, they won major awards for alphabet and counting.

Mark Laurie:   1:35
That is impressive.

Virginia Muzquiz:   1:37
And I drew the awards to because, as you can met like I am a bit of a diva, right? Somebody like people. So I would be like, Oh, Teddy, congratulations. You're the best seller, and I would make, like, little certificates.

Mark Laurie:   1:48
And I just love that that is, like, so unique. That's perfect. So when you were a child, lets , go back to that. Do they say that the things when you're around five years old is what shapes your life? What kind of events put you on the course to where you are now back when you're a kid,  5 or 6 years old?

Virginia Muzquiz:   2:06
Wow, that's a really deep question. When you're talking to somebody like me, Do you really want to go there? Short  version? Listen, you know, I I've done a lot of therapy, Mark. A lot of therapy and sort of one of my earliest childhood memories is of feeling lonely, um, of being the kid that, um that was just, like just sort of not fitting in. Um, I have a brother who is about seven years older than I am, and he taught me how to read before almost before I could speak. So I've been reading. I was a reader, a competent reader by the time I was, like three. So by the time you get to kindergarten and you're able to read, not really comprehend the content of but actually read the words of, like, Judy Blume novels, right? I was just like to smart for my britches. And I did you know, you your whole world. So I just didn't understand, Like, what is wrong with these people that they can't that they can't do these things and which was why i played school? Because they needed to be educated. Okay, Like, I needed to help them. Right? So I suppose that was kind of about fulfilling potential, but really one of my earliest memories  is seeking, seeking attention, wanting my mother's attention. My dad worked a lot. He's an entrepreneur, and he built a business from scratch. So he worked 20 hour days, came home, slept on a chair and went back to work and left my mom to kind of fend with us, and she was the bookkeeper. And so my earliest memories of her with her back, sort of sitting in a corner with her back to the kitchen and me sitting on the floor playing Barbies, saying Mommy, Mommy, play with me And she said would say, like you can play by yourself, Honey, Mommy's got work to do and so I think I really had had to learn. To,. One entertain myself. I needed to be creative with what we had. We weren't exactly rolling in dough when I was a kid. Try to be creative with what I hade and I had to tell myself good stories. So I we lived on 12 acres. There was some woods in the back of the house and there was this sort of creek that had formed. And I would go out there and play on Fairy Island, you know, and I So I had all these stories and really, I I just It was it was a function of being alone a lot.

Mark Laurie:   4:37
Anything else? Positive came about, your ability to entertain yourself? You have a need to teach people,

Virginia Muzquiz:   4:43
I think, my ability to tell stories. Um, I've always been driven to outcomes as well. So I'm even from a very young age. If we were fundraising, I was the number one fundraiser. If there was a food pantry that put out a call for canned food, I'm nine years old doing the canned food drive, that sort of thing. And then I was heavily involved. I don't see. I don't know if everybody knows what some of this stuff is. So if if you're like, what is that? Just ask. But, you know, 4H is?

Mark Laurie:   5:13
Yeah, we have them up here

Virginia Muzquiz:   5:15
and heart, head health, that whole thing. So I started in four age when I was nine, and I think that really shaped me as well, because there were sort of, you know, projects and competitions and goal setting and and doing things properly and having things, having processes and systems like that. I sewed. So I was in the home Ec department. We didn't actually raise any chickens or anything, but the point was, you know, was someone was going to review your work and they were going to give you feedback and you were going to get better. So that's just a early early time in my life of being coached and then as you as you know, you finished level one. Then you become responsible for all the level one people. And then you coach them on how to do the things that you've learned how to do. So I think that's a bit coaching people on a process and on getting an outcome. It probably started way, way back when I was nine or 10. When when I started in 4H.

Mark Laurie:   6:15
Thank you. You're the base because you're so polished, this systems and so clear about them now. And in some cases I still struggle. Think I'm still the artist. So I land on stuff like spontainous. I work  to come Jan. I work well, I have, like on the Colby scale, but like I'm one point from the top of being a quick start demonstration part at the bottom of the fact finders, like a one so the two of them combined. I have a complete stack. Jan's Reverse of  it

Virginia Muzquiz:   6:41
nice. It's always good to It's always good. Teoh, have someone in your camp that ensure up your weaknesses. I don't know about the being married to the polar opposite. Think that such that Vick and I have the same thing going on. It's not always easy.

Mark Laurie:   6:56
Well, that part of our relationship, it blends together cause we discover how to talk to us that we have this just past 45 years of marriage. This is a big year. I got 45 years of married 40 years. My company, um I've got my photographs in outer space have been out  there for about 36 years. All sorts of different things that kind of kind of add up into so already fund the meaning for your life

Virginia Muzquiz:   7:18
in service service in service, I think, Ah, lot of times people think about being in service as no being the person that is serving in the soup kitchen or like their different ways, right? So I'm more identify myself with the women of purple who who sponsored Jesus is my ministry. Okay, so if you go back as far as Jesus of Nazareth, you know, he disappears for like, 18 years and who knows what he's doing? I think it was like learning Buddhism and some stuff. He was learning some philosophy, right? And when he came back to do his Ministry if you look at it. The man never had a job. He was like, I think will be a life coach and a public speaker. And he never got. And he never got paid for it. But he always had sandals. He always had robes. He was cleaned, he was fed. He had a roof over his head. And But let's grant it that in biblical times the Jews were fairly cut out of the buy and sell, right? It was you had to pay your if you had to pay your taxes. But you actually didn't get to participate in the economy in any meaningful way. So it was really all about that community peace. And so when I look at that, there were these women in purple and they were the women merchants, and they funded that ministry. And so for me, services really about taking your surplus talent, The things that you do that do not strain or stress you, it's it's sort of like you, Mark. You know, you you can take a subject a woman and say effortlessly. I'm going to create this masterpiece where for somebody like me, it would it would be baffling. It would be very will be a struggle for me to do that because that's not my area of genius, right? So serving and ministry. And that is about taking your talent and your superpower and laying it over, using it as an overlay to solve a weakness or a gap or a lack or a scarcity in something or someone else. So for me, the what really gives me purpose and this has been this has been for a really long time. I have been very fortunate even in our most poor. I had three square meals a day and I had a roof over my head. I had clean clothes to wear. I had a bed to lay my head on. Right. So even at our most for granted, we were eating squirrels, ground hogs and other yucky meat. But there was just me in my house like we didn't have. We didn't have names for the meat, like beef and pork and chicken. It was like me. So but I was eight, right? So, um, for me, what breaks my heart is the, um the abject cruelty of some humans to others and how some humans never get a chance to thrive because of the accident of their birth. So my past is ending, ending poverty through entrepreneurship. Right? And I am I'm just a big advocate and I'm a big supporter. So they're in my I'm on the board of a charity called 10 by three. And we support women and men artisans in Third World countries. And we import there. They're artist in goods here and pay them more than fair trade. Usually somewhere between two and five times fair trade. We send out business coaches, teach them how to build more businesses. And right now, believe it or not, this is what's really cool. So we've got this covert thing going on. Correct. Okay, well, the Weavers can't. We've because they can't get together in the community to do the weaving. And that's not something you do by yourself. It's a communal thing, and we can't go get the baskets even if they were weaving. So like the whole weaving thing gone, However, the men and women that we've graduated it out of poverty are hiring our weavers in their other businesses that they've built because they graduated from our program and the villages are sustaining

Mark Laurie:   11:30
Now these apart in North America, they're in Africa

Virginia Muzquiz:   11:33
there. Uganda, Uganda, Ghana, Bangladesh, Togo. Yeah, so but But for me when I was on the board call on Wednesday, and I was just I was We've created communities that have an economy of scale wind before there was just dust. So I'm all about that, Um I I also supported a new organization called Made for Freedom. And that is Ah ah, brainchild of Ah, these are all social enterprises, right? That was a brainchild of a gal who went to Thailand and saw the human trafficking. And what starts to happen is you rescue all these women and you know what they dio They go back to their pimps because they don't have. They were stolen when there were seven or eight or nine. And they've been conditioned for this. This service, that sexual service servitude, they don't know how to do anything. They can't, right. They can't read. They don't even know their name half the time. Like they don't know how to brush their teeth. They have no living skills. So

Mark Laurie:   12:39
save them like rescue them is just is

Virginia Muzquiz:   12:41
a road well rescuing them is pointless if you don't. If you rescue them, then you have to put them into a rehabilitation program. And there were There were very few rehabilitation programs. So when you shop, it made for freedom. Your purchase covers rehabilitating girls, young women that have been rescued from human trafficking. I do Kiva lending. And it's just that sort of stuff I'm really driven for because I'm an entrepreneur. And I know that any time I don't have money, I think to myself, How could how could I sell something? What could I create a value in the world that somebody would want to give me some money for

Mark Laurie:   13:25
that works. We have some friends of ours, very wealthy characters, and they have a game. They're based out here, and they fly down on one of the jets to the far end of the country and its Maritimes. They get on after they give up their wallets and their phones. And they raced to who could get back at Calvary Remington first. And they can't use your name. They can't use their contacts. They have to find resources to pay their way to come back here. Uh huh. And that just keeps things real for them because they're in this real hope plushy job. But their their name means nothing there. Back account needs nothing. They're just a guy in the street trying to get the Calgary.

Virginia Muzquiz:   14:00
Yeah, I mean, I think it's we forget. And right now, as we're recording this, that the whole world practically is on some form or measure of locked down and, um, figuring it out, right? Just just really being ableto figure that I came up with a great one. I'll just put it out here. So anybody who's a travel agent, that is like, I can't make any money right now. They can book their like, I'm booking destination weddings for 2021. And I said, What if foreign locked down? They said that can't happen. I said, What if this is it? No, I'm serious. Like, what is it? What if this is it? This is how POW survive in a POW camp in a in a camp, right? This is my new normal. I may never this maybe it This is the left. This is all I got, right? So I said, Look, what if parents from now on have to home school their Children again. And what? I mean, it's driving people crazy. What's something third through fifth graders need to do that has to do with travel. Geography. So what if you did? Ah, a series right where you could say, like, Oh, we're going to dio We're gonna travel to Greece. And you just did like, a little video tour, like a little slide show tour of And this is the Parthenon. And this is about this and that and hear what they export. And here's what they import. And I mean, it's not hard. Its fourth grade geography. Okay, so so wait for it. So this is what I love. Now think about the brilliant part of this. So you're creating this travel now? You and I are in B and I write So so the unicycle global organization. So how hard? How hard is it to be like we're gonna go to Greece and look, I have a real Greek on the phone for you. Babies. Stop. Gross. How are you today, right? That's right. So you do that? So then you record it and its intellectual property, which means now I can sell it is a program, but wait for it. All of those families are paying you to, Let's just say, a membership subscription of $47 a month for the Kids travel program, right? Whenever we can travel, they're also going to be your clients. Yeah, because you have been in their home talking to their kids every week for the next 20 weeks. You

Mark Laurie:   16:11
know, you love you, trust you.

Virginia Muzquiz:   16:15
No one has taken me up on it. Don't you think that's smart? See, that's the kind of stuff that Jazzes me. But that's for me. It's it's all about What do you have that you could use to make something else that somebody would want or could use right now? So that's me.

Mark Laurie:   16:35
What's the biggest thing you've done? One that people go. I can't believe you did that. That is huge.

Virginia Muzquiz:   16:41
I raised Teoh amazing Children. That's big. I birth them without any epidural. So that was the big one. And then I and then I didn't kill them in the span of 25

Mark Laurie:   16:54
years. That is used as well, you

Virginia Muzquiz:   16:59
know, and seriously, I'm seriously proud of them. My oldest daughter, Nicole, works for us and she, uh she is my heart and she really She has a level of emotional intelligence that most most people our age haven't figured out yet. So she's She's very, very emotionally intelligent, super grounded, um sets effortless boundaries that you just don't cross, and she doesn't have to defend them or anything. They're just there, people. She's like, Oh, boundary people like I'm sorry. My youngest is 23. She is a dog groomer and she is my greatest teacher. So she is my teacher. She It's like, Mom, I'm going to make every risky mistake in the book. So think of everything that a a parent would never want their child to dio like everything, Everything, everything and so but a 23. She's lived more life then most people ever will in a lifetime. She has seen more struggle, and we're pain. Um, I mean, she's done drugs. She's been held up at gunpoint. I mean, like, just insanity, right? And so she's working for ah, for in a pet store chain in their grooming place. So this Kobe thing hit and they they they shut her down. So she, um she contacts the local authorities and says so. His mobile grooming like okay or and they were like, Yeah, you could do that. You just have to you know, they gave her these parameters. She's like, Okay, so she opened up her mobile grooming business. She has business cards, brochures found a lead source and eyes making more money now than she was before coming. I mean, she's her mother's daughter, right? Like hilarious. But But the point is, she's had a lot to learn, but she's also taught. She's also taught me a whole lot as well. So I think

Mark Laurie:   19:02
What? What a couple of lessons that you start. You just sit back and go. Wow, I would not have grown that without you.

Virginia Muzquiz:   19:10
One is what it means toe fierce love. What does fierce love look like? So some people think like Tiger Mama love is sort of about smothering your kids and dragging them along and telling them they're gonna and whatever and what I've had to learn is the most courageous part of parenting is being able to stand firm and watch them choose to hurt themselves and then say, I trust you to clean that up. Wow, I trust you because otherwise you end up in co dependence. And I am the adult child of two alcoholic parents. So coat I went to, I literally went to a therapist and I said, I have a problem And he said What I said, Well, my daughter's making some bad decisions that never, never. And by the way, I do have permission to share this about her from her. So I'm not, Does not divulging her personal life. She's like, If you need to tell it and it helps people, that s, oh, she's very healed at this point. So, um, but the therapist said, Well, you know, you really need to have your daughter. I go No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not the problem. I said. The only skill said I have to deal with this is co dependence, and I know that's not good. Like that's not gonna work right like that's but that's only skill set that I know is clean, you know, is make it easier, right? Clean the house cause Mom, you didn't make the dinner cause Daddy couldn't write like whatever it was like. That's what I learned how to dio and so that I think was probably really big positive as well, because I have for the most part, I can't say 100%. But I have an awareness of when I'm playing the hero, where I'm swooping in and trying to, like, save uninvited. And I also am more aware when people are playing the victim role that they don't really need Teoh. But they have it in them, have everything that they need. All the tools, all the courage, all the everything. It's sort of like the Dorothy, right. Click your heels together. There's no place like home. You had that in you all the time. And so some people do need help, right? They if you have no hands, tying your shoes kind of is a help. But if you have two hands, you can tie your shoes figured out. So, um, I've learned sort of when help is help and when it's butting in. Is that a hard lesson? Miller. It was for me. Yeah, sure. I mean, when you have ah, we have a whole history of, you know, bullying and being bullied and rescuing and playing the villain and being the victim. And like all of that all that crazy stuff is there, and I have a belief to about all this kind of programming that just runs in the background because we come is a blank slate and then our experiences program or reality into us. And, um, I don't think I can ever, like, get past the programming or fix my mindset. Like my mind's, It's not broken, it's programmed. So the question is, which program are you running when you are in making the decision? And it's really about not using that program for good decision making. So as long as you know, like, oh, that program is for the bad decision making.

Mark Laurie:   22:23
Most people don't think the time to learn which programs there riding on.

Virginia Muzquiz:   22:28
It's challenging, you know, we all I teach a that goals that matter, class right and for some people that that paradigm about wanted but don't want it, but you should want it. But you shouldn't want it, want it, don't want it, want your bad, you want it right like that. That thing most people have told me that's the most valuable day is the greedy day. They're like I never understood right Don't want that Children are starving in Africa, You know you want it. Oh, you greedy bastard. He'll pay your fair share. Bastard thief.

Mark Laurie:   23:05
Demons aside, Red

Virginia Muzquiz:   23:08
and the program. If you really look at it, however you wanna weigh were joking around before about like, don't get me started on the deep state, right? Whatever you want to call it, right, Whatever it is that that when we get on this planet in this in this version material version of ourselves three dimensional version of ourselves there are forces that keep us that hold us from being the limitless, powerful beings that we are right. And so all of that programming is part of that. And, you know, however you want to look at what his life, Robert fine shine thinks that we're all actually holographic projections of ourselves because heaven is boring on DSO. We're here to pick up the power pills. And so every time you discover a programming that's like it's a power pill that makes you more of yourself and less of the limited being and makes you a more limitless being, Um, which yet his theories air kind of problematic for me too. But again, it is however you're programmed, um, it the awareness of those programs and the double binds that they put you in the way you interpret things or the meanings that you give things they really do determine your joy, the spirit of joy that is within you each and every day. And, um, my friends cut, Conway says. Look, there's pleasure, happiness and joy. OK, pleasure. Is this cheesecake taste so good, Right? Happy, Mrs. U P. I get to eat cheesecake or Wow, that cheesecake was so awesome. Happiness. Joy is joy is Isn't it cool? That cheesecake even exists, like I thought, a cheesecake man who put that together. How did they think that that is so cool, Right? That's joy. You don't have to have it. You don't have to taste it

Mark Laurie:   25:15
must appreciate it. You just

Virginia Muzquiz:   25:16
have to be like That's cool. A lot of that, and so are limit our in our limit in fashion. What we do is we do this. Oh, that cheesecake tastes so good. But no, my butt is like 22 inches bigger. I should have never eaten that cheese cake. And then then happiness is like somebody should be to blame for making you know. No, but you shouldn't have let me eat that cheesecake, mark. And then the opposite of joy is who invented that stuff anyway? They know now. I'm a fat cow. It is all the cheesecake manufacturers full. The person who discovered cheesecake should be shot. Right? That's the program. That's the other program. So which one do you want to choose? Because you know what? Cheesecake doesn't do anything but sit on the plate.

Mark Laurie:   26:11
This is I'm here. Take me the way you want

Virginia Muzquiz:   26:14
or mold. If we keep it out of the fridge, right? It just It has its own physical properties, and it just sits on a plate and does what it does. It has absolutely no particular meaning good or bad. It really is all subscribe to it. Which program We run it through.

Mark Laurie:   26:29
I came across a quote that way. The person said Any situation, any item, any anything has no power until you a sign it something when you sit back. OK, so this is what you are. You're a bad thing. You're a dangerous thing. You're a threatening thing. You're a good thing you given an hour and you can also take that power away. But most people don't seem to realize that they just respond to what they think. Things are not realized that they're labeling it and therefore and then taking action against.

Virginia Muzquiz:   26:57
And the reality is so from a sort of afraid. Ian Lakhani in perspective. The way that we start to understand the world is that we know that Mommy is Mommy because she's not daddy. So we don't really understand. Mommy, we understand not daddy different. Not Daddy, right? We understand ourselves as I am. Virginia. I am not Mark. I am not Victor. I am not Megan. I am not. I am not. I am not. I am not brunette. I am blocked. And And how we how what we claim is what we are or are not starts to starts to shape the reality in our world. And then we spend our lives pointing out like now you've trained your particular activation system to think a thing to look for a thing. And so everywhere you go, you see the confirmation of your of your original bias that was formed before you had language. Yeah, okay. And so you have this confirmation bias and you just keep getting you keep getting the feedback that you see that you give the meaning that you give it. Because that was at the very beginning, however you did it and then the at the end of the day. Then we start getting into binary conversations where I'm right about cheesecake and you're wrong about cheesecake. Our perceptions of the past, right? But cheesecake literally would literally does me physical harm. My daughter does to my daughter's like Mom. I'm so dumb. I should listen to you. I had ice cream last night, and now I'm practically going to the emergency room, I said. Well, then you know that that dollar 99 Bunny Sunday costs you $3000 emergency room visit every time you do it. So it's not a $2 ice cream. It's a $3000 ice cream.

Mark Laurie:   28:49
Appreciate it for what it is, you know, that is well. So what would be the resources that have helped you along your way? And you sit back and say This is the tool kit that I've assembled the very beginning Once

Virginia Muzquiz:   29:07
I really believe most my tool kits have come out of mentors come through Mentor ship. So I would say I am an avid reader, and I consider, and I consider those authors to be my mentors as well. Um, I really funny. I don't actually listen to very many podcasts, but I enjoy running my podcast because then I find fascinating people. I'm letting this secret out. Like I'm letting my cat out of the bag rate. I e meet people and I go who You're so smart. I'd love to have you on my podcast. And then I ask them a bunch of questions and I learned a bunch of stuff that I wanted to learn from them. Like basically, you know, I get hours and hours of coaching in exchange for promoting them. Right? So So you don't need money. You don't only need money. So I think in the form of mentorship. So I've had I've had some really good, solid mentors. My my dad, for his problematic is our relationship had been when I was younger. Um was was a solid mentor for me. I had a mentor in Um huh. Ah, in high school, Al Kovacs. He was a chemistry teacher. And at the time that I met him, I actually had an eating disorder and he saved my life by not allowing me to starve to death. Um, and he was the really huge, really huge mentor and factor in my life. Um, Bob Russell was a professor at in college who was an invaluable mentor. So I just had a lot of them along the way. And I feel like that's really where when you when you find somebody that you can mash with who can speak the truth of you in love in a way that you can hear it, it opens you Teoh all the possibilities of what you could be. So I most appreciate right now in my life there just a few a few mentors J facade is one of them, which is how we met, who looks at me and says, Do do you not know? Do you not know, like, do not know what he's like? Do you not know the greatness in you? Like I don't think so. So I think you'll have to show me, right, So I have I have, like I went on the market is Chris. This is the weirdest thing back in energy January 2020. Everyone on the marketers cruise and so I'm like allowing along with luck and all of a sudden, like all the big kids, unlike Come hang with us. So there's like stage Levin Come hang with us and Michael Neely and Forbes Riley. I don't know if you know who she is, but Q v c. She has sold billions literally billions of the B dollars of product on Q b c forms. Riley. Okay, Um um, on a guy like they're just like Come, hang with us. You're really cool commitment. Like I told Django, I think im wetting my pants a little bit like and I'm like because I feel like I'm in eighth grader and the and the high

Mark Laurie:   32:06
schoolers just invited me to come like hang so cool

Virginia Muzquiz:   32:12
I don't get it right. So I think that's the deal. When you have mentors that see who you could be and then offer you and invite you to explore that and, um, help you and extend a hand, you know that for me, is that that is the place of the greatest. Expansion is through human connection.

Mark Laurie:   32:35
Remember, one of them is a high spread 12 teacher and start off telling Pretty good. He sat down of the Carver's desk at this sweater on, and I remember the time that something this is different, he says. You know, by the time you hit here, you know all there is to need to know what English says. You all know it. And it was says, yes, I'm not gonna teach you anything and I'm kind of going, That's a trap. This is not sound it. Everyone's like, Oh, good, he's not teach us nothing. And they said, So what we're going to instead, as we're gonna have to bring it out of you because you may not know what you know. I'm going. That sounds like way more work.

Virginia Muzquiz:   33:08
That sounds a little scary.

Mark Laurie:   33:11
It was, and that was that was such a calm things like, we're gonna bring it out of you. How did you like being surrounded by entrepreneurs like that? Cruz is kind of a special cruise.

Virginia Muzquiz:   33:22
How did I How did I like what?

Mark Laurie:   33:23
Being surrounded on your cruise by all these?

Virginia Muzquiz:   33:26
Oh, you know, one of the things. So here's I'll just Here's a kryptonite for me. It's a little bit like there is, and I'll share it because one I don't want anyone. If you're gonna be fascinating, you have to suck too. So that's just part of that. Um, yeah, it isn't. It really isn't our beauty or grace or our strength or it's it's It's the whole complexity of things, right? So So I enjoyed it. I signed up to go very last minute, and I felt really unprepared when I went. So most people, most people will look at me and think like I work a room, right. Like I like, I have it all together, whatever. And it is true. But when I inserted myself as a person of important, So when when you met me, I had already sort of aligned myself with Jay and had set myself up where I was skating on him. So he was acknowledging me that before I was acknowledge a ble. But so I went on this marketers Christian. There's like 400 people, and Jay was there, but there were 400 people and he wasn't leading the He wasn't leading the thing, so he couldn't shout me out. He couldn't. So I had to like do it all by myself. And that, like, was nauseating and exhausting for me because I actually am very self conscious and crowds. I was bullied as a kid, so it creates a lot of anxiety for me. Like to go Teoh walk into the big dining room and they didn't have a signed table seating. Now, with a sign table seating, that would have been fine, right? That's why I said, Yeah. Can I sit with you guys? Yeah, I was like, guys, like literally, and they were like, Yeah, here's a seat. I was like, Thank you so much for letting you because I never got to sit with anybody. And it was traumatic, as you know what Bomb, right? Like like Oh, my Lord. So there were all of these sort of really traumatic triggering things, and I would go back to my cabin in the middle of the day and I'd be like, just on the undead, like my cabin mates, like, what is wrong with, you know, like a you know, because it was this triggering. And and then there was this. This sort of like there were some people that I kind of wondered why they were there. All right, so I was like, Okay, um, do you do anything? Do you sell anything? Do you like, what do you do? And there were people that couldn't really even articulate, like this is what I dio. And so my my tendency is to just be like, Oh, and I can't take it. And so I have little judges about that, so and the work through that right I had to work through. You don't get to judge people. Your job is to be curious about them and to bring out the Brit like what you do in a photography, right. Like to bring out the beautiful business from within them and to understand what they dio. And so there were some people that really challenged me in that way. Um, there are some people that were really bad networkers. And you know how I feel about that?

Mark Laurie:   36:41
Yes, I do.

Virginia Muzquiz:   36:42
Selling, selling, selling, selling, selling like that. You couldn't have a conversation that they weren't trying to sell you other thing. And I'm like, I'm not buying your stuff. Just clinic it to know you as a human being with Jack for dinner. So that was so they're all those sorts of challenges. And then there was that that I'm not worthy thing. So there was a lot in that it was nine days, and, um, it it was. And then you're tired, right? And you're you're discombobulated and you're walking around the boat and like, you feel like you're in an earthquake all the time. And so yeah, And then, um and I had also just found out that I have a genetic blood disorder and, um, the the there's it's fine. There's all kinds of really cool things you can do, but the number one thing waas no animal protein, no meat. Okay. Wish that has said that when I was five dogs, so So I'm just It's like it was just fresh, like they had just said no meat. And so it was very difficult Teoh to deal with that. So I actually, um, one of my friends was on, and so I just didn't go near the food they just ordered. I was, like, here. Just here's just order me food, whatever. And they caught me on the line one time. I'm like, I'll just have a burger and fries he goes without the burger. He's standing driving without the burger

Mark Laurie:   38:08
friends looking out for you.

Virginia Muzquiz:   38:10
I turned around. I go, Dag, I thought I did you a break like No. Like if I see you had towards a food bar here, Moriah baby, because it really did it really put me in. A lot of it was painful, so But it's so yes, I was I was more challenged in that 90 days that I think I've been challenged in a really long time.

Mark Laurie:   38:34
But did you came up with what? Your goal. Like, you have a goal when he went into it?

Virginia Muzquiz:   38:38
No. Yeah, I did. Wait, I did to write on a boat

Mark Laurie:   38:43
to write him a note. I just

Virginia Muzquiz:   38:46
started going. I was like, Oh, look, a cruise that I can write off as a business expense. Okay, I'm in e like Okay, Like who gets to sit with the lean of incident, you know, for four hours on a beach and just get to know our you know what I'm saying? It was this There was It was just I had no agenda, and I had, and people are like, Oh, we're gonna be inking deals. But my system is Here's my system, Right. Just cause I met you on a boat does not mean I'm gonna ink a deal with you today. So I got a five step process and we might get through. Step two on here, but we got we got more steps to go.

Mark Laurie:   39:23
What's your five step process?

Virginia Muzquiz:   39:25
Meet you, then. I call that, you know, get acquainted, right? Become an acquaintance, which usually means I like I know your name and I know what you dio and I know the name of your company and I know where you live or where you work. That just basic information. Then I move you into. Then if we choose Teoh, continue, then we move into what I call the association phase. And that's really when I get to know you psychographic Lee. So acquaint an acquaintance. I'm going to get to know you demographically associate. I'm going to get to know you psychographic Lee, I'm going to know about your family. I'm gonna know about your background. I'm going to know about your friends. I'm gonna know this kind of a conversation. I want to know where you came from, right? I want to know.

Mark Laurie:   40:04
It's like, Do you have a file folder of all these things for each person you matters This in your head?

Virginia Muzquiz:   40:09
Oh, you know, I keep notes in a CRM. So when I get done, I actually jot them down on my system is I jot it down and Evernote and then I have an assistant who puts it in my crm for me. Um, So, um And then from there, if we're going to continue on into a business relationship so that that's where the friend relationship, you know, kind of like that's where kind of like your friends and your people that you associate with on a friendly basis, Um, hang. And then if I'm gonna take it further into a business relationship, then I I'm looking to develop what I would call an advocate relationship, which is where we speak knowledgeably about one another. And if you're going to do it from the B and I standpoint, it's a visibility relationship. I make you more visible to my network. You make me more visible to yours, right? Right, so and and largely like you and I, that's that's sort of where we are at this point, you know, we're gonna trade. Some were gonna trade podcasts, and I'm gonna make you visible to my network and talk up your awesome photo. Your, um yeah, your photography and all that. And ah, and make more visible right. And that's advocate on advocate level. If I want to move you up into a into a higher level of relationship, then that's what I'm gonna be caught. What I would call the credibility moment and that is moving you into what I call an ambassador role and ambassadors traditionally right? They are the They are the person that represents you in a foreign land. So this is I represent you in a foreign network. So this is where I go and I'm out networking. And I'm thinking about Mark Laurie. I'm thinking I walk into that chamber meeting and I'm thinking, Mark Laurie said he's looking to meet these kinds of people. Mark Laurie wants to meet the coordinators and directors of women's networking groups. No, Right, right. So I'm gonna go to those groups and I'm gonna meet those people, and I'm going to say, Hey, I got somebody I really would love for you to meet, right? So that's that's bringing you in to a foreign network that you wouldn't necessarily be able to penetrate yourself. And then at the affiliated level, that's what we're doing. We're finding each other clients, right? So when you're on A when you're on a marketer's cruise, they want to go straight to give me clients. And I'm like, That's like saying Come to my cabin and see my etchings and and you know, networking is a lot like dating. So you know, the worst guys out on the on the circuit are the ones that are like high. I'll buy you dinner and then we're gonna go home and do it right like they're like, high. Want to do it like No, Phil, are you? What? Right. Um and that's really when people go in for the bring me clients or or by my product, right when they go in for the kill before they've developed those other you know, before they've warmed you up and and gotten to know you and and and learned how to be reciprocal in that in that space.

Mark Laurie:   43:09
Really cool. We're running out of time. I could talk for you for days on end. Well, we'll just have to do it again. We'll have to do it again today and it's been just incredible for it. So I've been sitting here with Virginia. I will have some details at the right up section below. She is an amazing lady, and actually, she's kind of subdued today. If you can believe that her energy level is, uh, it's a whole different plane which gets under program

Virginia Muzquiz:   43:33
when I'm talking conspiracy theory and deep state, That's when you're going to see my glory.

Mark Laurie:   43:40
Thank you so much for coming out. It has been fascinating. This has been fascinating with Join us on our website and in Your Spirit Photography of Calgary, Alberta, and is produced in Congaree by Lee Ellis and my office media.