Interview with Isabella Silverio, Business Coach – Women Entrepreneurs

Could you tell us about your role and journey as an entrepreneur? What inspired you to start as a business coach?

After spending 4 years in the startup realm and learning so much about Millennial buying behavior and building online communities, I decided to take my skills to the online space and market myself as a Business Consultant. I did this in my Senior year of college. Two years later, I am operating at multi- six-figures, handling over 50 clients at a time.

As a woman in male-dominated tech industry, what’s the biggest challenge you face from within your organization and outside? What message do you have for other female professionals in the community?

People can’t seem to believe that you’re actually good at something, and you feel like you are continuously trying to prove it to yourself and to others that you are good at your craft. Not only that you’re good at it, but you’re successful and doing well at it. The message I have for them is to focus on your impact and the people’s lives you’re improving, not the people critiquing from the outside.

What lessons did you learn from coaching young women professionals?

That they’re continuously not feeling like they’re worthy or capable of running a business on their own. This is a problem I run into with women who have just started their business a week ago to 5 years ago. It’s a continuous feedback loop of mindset work. When it comes to our economy, we have to make more shifts to encourage women that they are capable of being successful and monetizing off of their own knowledge.

What is the link between self-care and productivity? Why do women professionals often find themselves failing with understanding this key link?

I think people are misunderstanding self-care for lots of bubble baths and face masks, but it’s also journaling and doing that deep inner work. I think that is where they’re failing to understand the key link. It’s important to take time for yourself and do things that make you feel better and boost your confidence. You also have to work on the inside, not just the out.

How placing self-care first helped you have the most successful income months?

Figuring out what was really holding me back. It had nothing to do with my appearance. I overwork myself because I don’t think I can be successful. So understanding I didn’t have to work harder, I had to work smarter and focus on what I can control.

Could you tell us something that fascinates you the most about in working and building an open workplace that doubles the inclusion and diversity? How are such inclusive workplaces perceived by your customers and partners?

When it comes to building online communities, the more that you are yourself the more like-minded people you’re going to attract. So being a Hispanic woman who works for herself, lots of Hispanic women thank me for building a business and not sticking to societal norms of what it looks like and means to be an immigrant. I found that by being myself online, I created that inclusive place. If you preach inclusivity, that’s what you’ll attract to you. I’ve only ever received positive feedback for speaking on topics such as inclusivity and diversity, which makes sense because people who don’t like what I’m doing are just speaking nasty things behind closed doors and I don’t really care about that anyway.

If there was one thing you would want to change in the way modern tech companies try to bridge the gender gap, what would it be?

Maybe when it comes to resumes, there’s no actual personal information, just the resume. We can try that out and see how that works.

How do you inspire your people to work with technology?

By painting the vision of how technology can improve how we’re operating our business, letting them see the results, and having their hand be a part of the things we create and the milestones that we hit.

One word that describes how you work.

 Freeing.

What app/software tools can you not live without?

Slack, Instagram, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs

Which superhero character movie do you most profoundly relate to?

I don’t watch superhero movies, but I did really like Wonder Woman. I feel like a lot of people say that though so I’ll go with Hello Kitty for sure. Anything Hello Kitty.

Thank you, Isabella! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.