Adam Torres and Luisa Molano discuss HERlocity.
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Show Notes:
HERlocity is helping female entrepreneurs build scalable and sustainable businesses by blending purpose, strategy/execution, and personal growth. In this episode, Adam Torres interviews Luisa Molano, Founder of HERlocity, explore Luisa’s journey as an entrepreneur and HERlocity.
About Luisa Molano
Luisa’s academic journey includes attending Regis University and obtaining dual executive and embodiment coaching certifications. She studied under figures like Steve Hardison, Rich Litvin, and shaman LánéSaán Moonwalker.
Despite nearly two decades in the corporate world, Luisa yearned to have a deeper sense of fulfillment. Recognizing her innate calling for something greater, she took the brave leap into entrepreneurship and now leads HERlocity, a global network that blends purpose, strategy/execution, and personal growth for female entrepreneurs across the globe.
Through her 1:1 work with clients and her signature program, EXPAND, Luisa supports female entrepreneurs on the journey to $250K in revenue to build the inner and outer systems that fuel scale and success.
About HERlocity
HERlocity is a global network designed to empower women in business by combining purpose, strategy, and growth. It provides purpose-driven women with access to exclusive events, expert insights, business support, and a global network of like-minded entrepreneurs. Built around the concept of the Holistic Entrepreneur (HoE)—a woman who aligns her business with her purpose—HERlocity helps members achieve meaningful revenue growth while nurturing personal and professional fulfillment. More than just a business platform, HERlocity is a movement for women building businesses that feel as good as they look.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today I have Luisa Milano on the line, and she’s founder HERlocity Luisa, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me, Adam. All right, Luis. So we got a lot to talk about today. So I was talking about building your business, DNA, and I definitely wanna get into HERlocity . You as founder, like what inspired the idea. But before we get into all of that, in your current work, maybe take us back in time a bit.
Like , how did you get started in business? How did I get started in business where I was almost fired from my executive job at a Fortune 1 31 company, and what ended up being one of the toughest points in my career ended up being one of the biggest blessings I. Wow. Funny how that happens, huh? Let me be honest with everyone right now, in the rear view mirror, always, always the hindsight 2020, always right.
Oh, so, how’d you bounce back? take it further. How’d you bounce back from that? Yeah. So I worked with a coach years ago who said, if you can feel it all, you can have it all. Mm-hmm. And the weekend that I received my pip, it was a seven page PIP for anybody who hasn’t heard what PIP is.
Friends, it’s a performance improvement plan. AKA. You have 90 days to get your, you know, what together, or you’re outta here. Mm. And I took my seven page document home. Put it aside on the counter was like, I can’t deal with this right now. Woke up the next day, read through it, cried. Mm-hmm. For about, I don’t know, 30, 45 minutes.
’cause I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I was like, mm-hmm I’m a high performer. I’ve gotten bonuses, I’m a considered a hypo. How could this be happening to me? And then in the course of. That maybe 90 minute session on my balcony and looking out at the sky and the cars driving by, I realized that I had a different way that I could create the situation and that was that it was happening for me.
Mm-hmm. And so through the tears on the other side of that, the aha, the choice, the moment of sovereignty was, you know what, this isn’t happening to me. This is happening for me. And if it’s happening for me, what do I see ahead of me? And the rest, as they say, is kind of history. Wow. , what a story. And so you, continue, you’re still there, you bounce back.
At what point does entrepreneurship, when does that, when does that kind of rear its head in, your world? Yeah. So once I realized that this was happening for me mm-hmm. I said, what’s not working here? Like, how did I find myself in this situation? And I realized that. The pot that I’d grown in and that I was very grateful for my 15, almost 15 year corporate career.
I was sort of, I was complete with the corporate world and because I’d spent Wow. The previous seven years working for the big titles, the big bonus, the comp, the title, the span of control, the direct reports, the influence, the power. I was like, I can’t walk away from this empire. It’s been seven years. And then the universe is like, well, I’m gonna give you a little nudge and it’s gonna be called a pip, and it’s a gift.
But you’re gonna feel a little frustrated with the wrapping paper. And when I saw it for what again? What if this is happening? For me, I said, what if I’m done with corporate? Like what? What would be next? And I started to talk to friends, mentors, peers, had those trusted humans in your life who you can soundboard with.
And one of ’em said, what if you went into business for yourself? And I had never. Thought about that. It was, well, there’s another role, there’s another company, there’s another industry, and it was almost like this box that my world had existed and I stepped outside of it and saw a completely new path, which was entrepreneurship.
Dang. what was your support group around you like at that time? ’cause and I’ll, I’ll pick on myself first. I know when I went into the entrepreneurship side of things from corporate, ’cause I was definitely as corporate as they get, I mean almost 14 years in finance and I. All the things you can think of.
I didn’t know. And I didn’t even know what being an entrepreneur really was. And when I did went that route, you know, suddenly I hadn’t really, it was nothing I ever dreamed about or ever thought about. In my last book, I call myself the accidental entrepreneur ’cause it is the truth. But then when I went that route, I know people around me got a little shaky, like, what’s going on with Adam?
Is he okay? Like what, what? I don’t get it. He’s never talked about being an entrepreneur. Through or before I get in his life and now all of a sudden he’s like in business for himself or like, what’s going on? So I’m curious, how was your experience in that transition period and doing it quite well? I might add Adam, very few people have the podcast ecosystem that you have beautifully created, BTW.
Very kind nine years later, I uh, year one was not like that. So for anybody watching year one was recording from my phone. Thousand episodes. There you go. So that’s heck yeah. So, but , getting back to it, those, how was your support group created this time? Like your either friends or family, like what were they saying?
I love the question, and I’m gonna answer it with a two distinctions. One is I was, and still am a high performing, ambitious, driven woman. Big dreamer, big doer. I have big dreams, but I also wanna make them happen. And so when you have this archetype of, I’m strong, I’m bold, I’m a woman. You know, I was born in a third world country immigrant parents, and I came here and like I was taught the value of hard work.
You don’t wanna let people see you sweat. You don’t wanna be the one going, I don’t know, I’ve spent 15 years in corporate, I don’t know where to start. So I sort of suffered in silence that sort of like literally suffered in silence, gripped the wheel at 10 and two. I had maybe one or two or three people that I really trusted.
And if I could go back to me in year one, I would say, Hey. Reach out. Mm. Let other people know that you don’t have all the answers. ’cause here’s the thing, in entrepreneurship, no one does. And if someone seems like they do, they’re full of, you know what? Mm-hmm. No one has all the answers. And so as I started to develop that skillset of vulnerability, quite honestly, which is a superpower, if you’re a fan on any level of Brene Brown, I started to create some of those connections and find those like-minded individuals who were on similar journeys who were.
A, maybe a step or two back that I could support and got fulfillment in that, were on my level that I could soundboard with and support and connect with and build relationships with it. And then a step or two that I could learn from and also cultivate that relationship with them. So the two steps back, the same journey, and then two or three steps forward.
Hmm. Wow. That’s quite a story. and I think that, hopefully others can take some solace in that, right? Like, when you’re going through it and you don’t know what’s, exactly happening. And it’s new, especially specifically. And, and it kind of, whenever I talk about this, it’s kind of like woes me, right?
Oh, you were so successful in corporate, you know what I mean? Like, and you were too. So it’s kinda like one of those things, like, you’re like, like it can’t be like, poor me, but it’s still a thing. It’s still your experience, right? And it’s. Still a transition and being successful in corporate doesn’t guarantee you’re successful as an entrepreneur, that’s for sure.
To completely different things, in my opinion. So when does HERlocity kind of begin? Like how, you get the idea for that? Yeah, so HERlocity was, I call it born because in business we birth things. Any of you listening are probably nodding. You’re like driving or making your breakfast Nodding.
Going. Yep. It’s a birthing process. You bring things, there’s, there’s a gestation. There’s all the things that are such a great, great metaphor and I spent the first few years serving and running my boutique high touch, one-on-one coaching practice. I was. Strictly an executive coach also had consulting, so I kind of called it like a consultant.
And then I realized a few years ago, I wanna make an evolve to serving more people. There’s only so many people in a calendar year that I can work one-on-one with what might that look like? And I started to look at the results I had, what I researched, what I was passionate about, what I thought the world needed, what wasn’t happening, what pissed me off, what I kind of.
Began to call my, business and my brand, my brand, DNA, and then went, wait a second. I want the next layer of the question or the inquiry was, what do I wanna be remembered for? And when I started to sit with that question, I realized I wanna be remembered for amplifying women in business. And then when I sat with that.
In a vast span of about three months, this idea of a community came to be. And then I had a thread to pull on and to build and to soundboard with people and to research and to do diligence, et cetera, et cetera. And then from that, her HERlocity was born. Wow. And so now you loc iss born. What’s next in terms of like bringing on, let’s just say those first, I, I want to use your words.
Community members possibly, or clients. however you word it. What is the community called? HERlocity . And it’s a play on words between her. And HERlocity , and it’s mm-hmm. All centered around holistic entrepreneurship and how viewing entrepreneurship as a woman in business holistically cuts through the noise in a way that just the personal development or just the purpose work or just the strategy and execution alone don’t do, but when you.
Blend and fuse the three mm-hmm. Into this dynamic and you bring it to life consistently, and you’re surrounded by other humans across the globe doing that same thing, on that same journey. Mm-hmm. You get velocity. Her velocity. what does holistic entrepreneurship mean to you? I think I, we hear that word holistic used pretty often with medicine, right?
Like holistic medicine. Those two words aren’t always paired, I would argue with, with entrepreneurship. So what does that mean to you? Yeah, so going back to. You’ve got purpose, you’ve got strategy and execution, and you’ve got personal growth. These three dimensions of business in the world, according to Luisa Milano and the thought leadership that I bring into the world, we must have a purpose.
We, well must actually is not true. I just realized that there’s some , that isn’t true. When we have. Purpose. There is a lot of clarity. There is a lot of momentum that comes from that because we’re building a business from a place deeper than our brain, from a place, deeper than external validation or revenue or metrics or launches or funnels.
It’s this deeper layer of why, and that’s important, but it’s not everything. Having a really clear, compelling purpose isn’t enough. We also need to be in a place and in a space to make smart. Business decisions because otherwise we find ourselves doing the right things in the wrong order and the wrong things in the right order, and then going, why is my revenue not growing?
And I love supporting women to grow their revenue meaningfully and. Prove that we can have our cake and eat it too. We can have success. We can have scale and good revenue without losing ourselves, without burnout, that we can work and we can show up to our business powerfully and launch and grow clients and develop marketing strategies and sales strategies without burning out along the way.
Because if we get there, wherever there is and we’re not in one piece, is it worth it? Mm. Can you share maybe an experience with either a community member or other, otherwise just like a holistic entrepreneurship, maybe a success story and something related to her loss. Can you share a story?
Of course. So last year a member of the community joined my small business accelerator. It’s called Expand, and it’s. The journey of growing your revenue by 50% in five months. Mm-hmm. She joined at about the three month mark she said. Can we have a conversation about working one-on-one? I wanna learn a little bit more about it.
We hopped on a call and I said, okay, you’ve made some great progress here over the last couple of months, but if we worked one-on-one, this is only going to accelerate things and. Deepen the transformation of you as an entrepreneur in your business. So what would an what an what would an incredible outcome look like from a revenue standpoint?
’cause it’s really objective, right? Mm-hmm. The intangibles, like, are we more abundant and confident and powerful and purposeful? They’re heartened. You can’t. See it on a spreadsheet. So I love to talk about revenue because it’s so sticky. You’ve grown your revenue. The money’s in the bank, or the money’s not in the bank.
It’s the p and l looks the way you want it to, or the income statement, or it doesn’t. And she said, well, I’ve kind of stalled at about 8,000, and if I could get to 12,000 consistent months of revenue, like 12,000 a month consistently, that would be incredible. I said, all right, let’s do it. Let’s do it in three months.
Let’s play the game called. Grow your revenue to 12,000 a month consistently in month two. Just shy of month two, she hit 13,000. Wow. So I said, we still got a month together. Yeah, we still got, but it gets better friends. It gets better. I said, we still got a month together. What do you wanna do? Fast forward in January, she said yes to working together for a year.
And she is now, she just Q1 closed at 35,000. Wow. That’s significant. That’s really significant. And the best part is some might think, okay, well she’s, you, she’s doing a lot and she’s doing it faster. And you’re talking about her velocity. Louisa, so like I, you, you may even be listening, feeling a little exhausted like, oh my God, I can’t do more.
I’m already doing so much. She actually got there by doing less better. How? Wait. Less better? Yes. Yes. Do it. Explain. Come on. You can’t leave me hanging like that. Luisa, come on to give you one example. She was, it was taking her seven touches to go from a sales inquiry to a proposal. We reduced that to three.
She almost doubled the amount of responses she was giving to people reaching out to her to wanna know more about her business from the leads that she was getting. And along the way, not only did she shorten her sales cycle and get people to that proposal place and the, billing of the booking of the revenue, the billing of it, she also said, well wait a second.
I wanna grow this even more, because remember she started at eight K months. We got to 13 K months. Mm-hmm. She Right. 13 K. And now she’s consistently on this trajectory where mm-hmm. In the first quarter of of the year, she exceeded where she thought she’d be. Now, now we’re having a conversation about her scaling herself and bringing in somebody to support her around sales.
Wow. So now where before she was like, I can’t, it has to happen. I’m the one that has to sell. And like obviously that wasn’t true, but it felt real to her. She’s for sure excited about bringing somebody on board and scaling herself. And I goes, you got here doing it all, whipping the wheel at 10 and two, and now you’re bringing in somebody in to support you to scale yourself in sales.
Now, imagine where you’re gonna be in June. Imagine where you’re gonna be in September, October, November. Yeah. What a wonderful story, Louisa, I’ll tell you it’s been great having you on the show today and to get to know more about her loss, I know we are just there’s much more. You have to give more stories, more case studies more tools, more tips.
If somebody’s listening or watching this and they wanna follow up and they wanna connect with you and your team, how do they do that? A couple places. My website is a wonderful place to start. It’s a little bit about me across all of the different aspects of my world, my, ecosystem, and that’s www lou dot luis milano.com.
So L-U-Y-S-A-M-L-L-A-N o.com. Instagram is probably the second place. And then LinkedIn, Louisa s Milano on LinkedIn and Louisa Milano. Do LOC on Instagram Loc itself. You can check out the landing page, feel into what we say and how we position the space, the network, the community. And if it’s a space that calls to you and resonates for you, that’s.
loc.com. H-E-R-L-O-C-I-T-Y. Amazing. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put the links in the show notes so that you can click on the link and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button.
This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and Luisa wishing. Wishing you continued success with HERlocity . And thanks again for coming on the show.
Thank you so much for having me. Bye y’all.
Let’s chat.