Ana transformed her business by overcoming her procrastination. With our program, she addressed critical productivity issues that were threatening her business sustainability, and enabled strategic business expansion.
” Hi, my name is Anna Guerrero and I am a professional freelance pattern maker who helps clothing brands with all the technical development aspects behind the scenes to help bring their designs to life. When I first reached out to Grace, I was extremely burnt out, overworking myself, spending 80 plus hours on projects that should have really taken 10 because I lacked the confidence to trust myself as a professional in my field, and so I would often spend time just double checking, triple checking, quadruple checking my work, just wasting a lot of precious time. It cost me to be late with client projects constantly. I was late with invoices. Basically, I just felt like I was failing in my business. I also felt extremely alone in this. I seriously thought that there was something wrong with me, and what made me join was being so tired of being stuck with this never ending feeling of I’m not really living my life.
“I’m just working, working, working all the time. But in reality, it just felt like I was not getting much done. My biggest concern about joining Grace’s programme at the beginning was thinking, what if I don’t follow through with it? And also how much time would I have to put into this? At the time, I already had a full schedule, and I’ll be honest, I’ve joined programmes where halfway through I just lose momentum, and I decided to invest in myself with Grace’s programme because I’ve had so many other dreams and goals for myself, and I felt like I would just never reach them if I kept myself stuck in the same loop. Of course, money was also an issue at the time for me, but I can honestly say it was worth every penny. Since working with Grace, I’m happy to say that I was finally able to find the guts to start my own clothing brand, which is a dream that I’ve had for quite some time, and I’ve been just taking messy steps along the way and learning from them rather than waiting for me to have that perfect product and then put it out to the world.
“That’s a huge win that I’ve gained from working with Grace. Also, having more confidence in how I show up on social media for my brand. I’m more consistent and intentional with every single thing that I post. Of course, there’s those times where I feel like, oh my God, this is so cringe. Why am I posting this? But at the end of the day, I’m like, you know what? Let’s just do it and just learn from it. In regards to my other business, whenever I send proposals to my clients, I feel a lot less uncomfortable with the whole money aspect of it because at the end of the day, I am providing a service that is quite valuable to them. So I can honestly say my relationship around money has certainly changed. I’ve also gained the feeling of being more caught up, and I say that in quotes because of course, to-do lists, sometimes they’re just never ending.
“But I guess that’s life. And with all the tools that I’ve learned in Grace’s programs, both TNT and Messy Action, I’ve learned to prioritize the tasks that are actually important and then basically weed out all the busy work that I was just using to keep me from actually doing the important stuff. I also just gained more trust within myself and my own work, spend less time overthinking, perfecting triple checking work, taking on unnecessary extra work that I deliver to my clients just to prove that I know my stuff. One final thing that is really important, my client projects are 95% on time now, which has left me the free time to work on my own clothing brand and personal projects, as well as spending time with my loved ones. So that’s huge. In terms of procrastination and productivity, one of the things that really stuck to me is calling myself out during those times that I don’t want to deal with difficult tasks that life throws my way, and instead of saying, I’ll do it later, I tell myself, or You could just do it now, and just getting those things done right there and then.
“I don’t have to deal with all these things hanging over my head and cluttering up my brain, keeping me from doing the often scary things that truly matter. I’ve also gotten so much better at spotting that resistance and taking action before even more time is wasted. Having a morning routine has really helped me jumpstart into my day with more determination and less panic. There’s some days where I go the full morning without even looking at my phone, and that’s huge because I realized that I don’t need a quick fix of doom scrolling, and I now have the power of living my own life versus living through the eyes of other people on social media. That’s definitely been extremely helpful. One last thing I wanted to point out that’s pretty important is I didn’t magically become faster with Grace’s programmes, but instead I learned to gauge my own capacity so much better, so that way I’m not taking on a lot more than I can handle by taking on a lot less work.
“My workflow feels a lot smoother, and I’m able to leave space in my day so that way I can deal with the things that inevitably come up, like all those little fires to put out. So overall, I just have so much more respect for myself and my own time rather than feeling like I’m like this machine just pumping out work like a zombie on autopilot half the time. One of my favorite parts of working with Grace is that no matter what, no question is too small. Any question can be asked, and it’s welcome. You’re allowed to be vulnerable. I felt like that was really valuable because I was able to just open up and ask the questions that I always thought like, oh, maybe this is too dumb of a question, or too small of a question. And another favorite thing is that I really loved about working with Grace was the focus sessions because it made me feel like we were all together in this, even though all of us had different backgrounds and we’re working in different fields, the sense of togetherness was what I really, really enjoyed.
“Overall, it was an amazing experience and I was able to do things I didn’t think that I was capable of. If I would not have taken the opportunity to work with Grace, I am afraid that I would’ve just continue to be stuck in my freelance business, feeling unhappy, resentful, and who knows, I may have just burnt it to the ground rather than fixing what was misaligned with it. For example, setting boundaries, charging fair rates. I’ve gained a lot more appreciation for that business by knowing that I’m the one that is in control of it. More importantly, I would have not had the courage to start my own brand, which is something that I had wanted to do for a long time. And I can honestly say that I’ve been really happy that I’m finally doing that for myself. You should work with Grace if you have ever struggled with procrastination and perfectionism, but especially perfectionism because those two go hand in hand, like perfectionism is what leads into procrastination.
“And if you’ve ever felt like an imposter or felt like you’re not good enough, trust me, you are good enough to do whatever it is that you set your mind to. It’s really just a matter of learning how to deal with your emotions and finding that trust within yourself. One last thing that I wanted to mention about how Grace’s programs have helped me is they’ve really helped me deal a lot better with my A DHD. It actually pushed me to finally get it officially diagnosed and lean more into it and have self-acceptance that I am the way I am for a reason. So with that said, if you’re finding yourself thinking up of all the many reasons not to join, that’s all the more reason to do it. I would highly encourage you to reconsider it, like you will not regret it. So thank you again, grace, for letting me be part of this program. I really enjoyed it.