IAM2250 – Coach Simplifies Complex Business Concepts for Her Clients

Celi Arias, the CEO and founder of the Grown Ass Business.

Celi shares her entrepreneurial journey from her childhood business ventures to running a global clothing line.

After years of navigating challenges, she transitioned into coaching to help other entrepreneurs avoid common pitfalls and shorten their learning curves.

Celi shares her early entrepreneurial experiences that shaped her coaching business and explains her approach to simplifying complex business concepts for her clients.

She emphasizes the importance of discernment for CEOs in problem-solving and discusses effective strategies to focus on the right problems.

Moreover, she highlights the insights on avoiding complications in business challenges and outlines the top three qualities of an effective CEO.

Website: Celi Arias

LinkedIn: Celi Arias

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Transcription:

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Celi Arias Teaser 00:00 

So my goal is always like, how do I get my clients to take action faster? Oh, I get them to understand these concepts really fast so that they can take action faster.

Intro 00:12

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:38

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have an awesome guest on the show today. I have Celi Arias. Celi, excited to have you on the show.

Celi Arias 00:47

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk to you.

Gresham Harkless 00:49

Yes, I'm super excited to talk to you as well, too. We had so many great conversations just as before we were jumping in.

But of course, before we do that and have another one, I want to read a little bit more about Celi so you can hear about the awesome things she's been working on.

And Celi is the CEO and founder of the Grown Ass Business, where she empowers entrepreneurs to break free from revenue plateaus and burnout by teaching them to manage their ventures as a whole ecosystem.

Celi focuses on building scalable businesses through her proprietary key growth system technology, ensuring her clients understand core business principles necessary for sustainable growth.

Recognized as a top coach by the upside in 2024, Celi draws from her diverse background and extensive education to help entrepreneurs scale their businesses to 7 figures and beyond.

And just preparing before we jumped into this interview, I heard, read a little bit about her 5 systems, the same change, which I think is absolutely awesome because we always are sometimes not wanting to take that change, but we know that it can help us out in the long run.

So I love that she has that. And one of the things that I read on her LinkedIn is she says CEOs come to her at the end of their rope and CEOs also hire her to scale without sacrifice.

So Celi, Excited to have you on the show. You're ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Celi Arias 02:03

I am so ready.

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Gresham Harkless 02:05

Ready then. We'll kick everything off. I know I touched on it a little bit, but I want to rewind the clock, hear a little bit more on how you got started when I call your CEO story.

Celi Arias 02:13

Yeah. Well, this current business is born out of a desire to help more entrepreneurs because I've been an entrepreneur most of my life.

I started my first business when I was very, very, very young and it made me money and it helped me pay for ballet when I was a kid and it helped me buy my first car and it helped me through college.

And that is kind of how I always got into this. Whenever I saw a problem, I'd be like, well, I can fix it. I can figure that out.

That's kind of how I'm and I think that's how most entrepreneurs are wired. Right? When you see something wrong in the world, or you see something you could do better, you're like, I can do that. If that's your wiring, you're most likely an entrepreneur.

So I had a babysitting business when I was a kid, all through college, and then out of college, when I got a second degree in fashion design, I started a clothing line and I ran a global clothing line for 9 years.

And I always say it, it ran me because I have literally made all the mistakes in the book with an incumbent with that business and then other businesses. I've made all the mistakes.

I got an MBA. Don't bother. Don't get an MBA. If you're an entrepreneur, it's not going to give you what you want.

And I just think after 25 years in business, I'm really passionate about helping people. I'm like, no, don't do that. Trust me. Don't, don't touch that. That stove is on.

You are going to get hurt. Move your hand to do this instead. So I'm very passionate about shortening the journey for people.

Because I always tell my clients like, look, you can figure it out. You will figure it out. It just might take you 10 to 15 years.

But if you focus on the right things at the right time, where you're at right now, and your audience is 5 years in or less, right?

Which is the, like, it's the, it's the sensitive time. It's when we're vulnerable and we're still soft and we are sensitive about everything that works or doesn't work.

That's, this is the precious time. If you do the right things in this time, it won't take you 10 years to figure it out.

And that's what I'm passionate about. And that's how I started my coaching business, which is in helping people just shorten time.

Gresham Harkless 04:30 

Nice. Well, I definitely appreciate that. And so I would love to hear more on how you're working with serving clients, how you're creating that better mousetrap for lack of a better term.

Celi Arias 04:38

Yeah. I mean, I think that, so here's, I always got in trouble in my MBA class because like in classes I would get in trouble because, people use certain jargon and rhetoric and words that are business language terms.

And they would, define some term and I'd be like, oh, you mean when you use this word, you mean you're just saying that?

And my professors would get annoyed with me because they'd be like, don't oversimplify it. Like, no, I'm using this word to talk about the, but what you're just saying is like, oh, profit is just like what the money I have left at the end of the day.

Like, and I would always get in trouble for that. But I think that business owners actually need the simplification.

And that's what I've done in my methodology. It's like, you don't need all the jargon. You don't need all the fancy words. You don't need. You just need to know exactly what you need to know so that you take action.

You need to feel really confident in how your business works and what gets business to work so that you take action. So I purposely use simple terminology.

I purposely make it very basic. Not because I don't have 4 degrees and not because you're not smart either, but our brains need to like get it really fast and go, okay.

Because what happens is when your brain feels like it understands something and you feel confident, now you have the confidence to go take action.

Gresham Harkless 06:13

And where does business happen? And that action?

Celi Arias 06:14

Not in, not in the classroom, not in the theory books, not in talking about it. Business happens when you go and take action and the action either worked and you're like, amazing, that worked.

Let's double down or that didn't work. Let's ex let's analyze why it didn't work and let's pivot and try something different.

So my goal is always like, how do I get my clients to take action faster? I get them to understand these concepts really fast so that they can take action faster.

Gresham Harkless 06:46

Nice. I love that and I think it gets a lot too. I always say we forget about the human part of business.

And I almost wonder if this is part of what I would like to call your secret sauce. It could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both.

But I always feel like a big sign of excellence in someone being able to do what they do so well is to be able to take the complex and make it simple.

Do you feel like that's part of your secret sauce, the thing you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Celi Arias 07:13

Yeah, I think that's definitely probably one of my special skills is I love complex things and I love making them super simple.

That's probably definitely my, like I'm always making my frameworks visual. I work with an illustrator even to make them super visual and easy to understand and easy to digest and make them fun.

That's number 1. And 2, I think that my goal is to teach my business owners that the power of a business leader and a CEO is to develop the power of discernment.

So if I can get you to think like a CEO, I've done my job, I've won. And what I mean by that is a powerful CEO can look at any problem that arises and can distinguish, is this a me problem?

Is this like a mindset problem and me holding myself back? Is this an actual business strategy tactical problem that I need to actually fix right now?

And maybe is this a problem that's not really the problem? Because we love fixing things and helping people.

And we love fixing things for our teams or getting like, we do this all the time, right? Oh, a new social media strategy just got presented to me in Instagram ads.

Maybe that's the thing I need to do. And I go down a rabbit hole for 2 to 3 days and I just lost time on something that wasn't the thing that's going to move the needle in my business right now.

So a real CEO can really discern, is this the right, that's cool. That may be a problem, but is it the right problem to solve right now? Right?

And is this a me problem? If we can start to kind of untangle things and be able to look at them separately, that's when you're really being a leader in your business.

And that's my goal is that I'm always teaching my clients, let's really understand strategy, let's really understand tactics and let's really understand mindset and how our beliefs and experiences and thoughts and emotions and past failures are affecting us right now.

Gresham Harkless 09:32

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I almost wonder, is that what you would consider to be what I call a CEO hack?

Because this could be like an Apple Book or even a habit that you have, something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Is it that taking and creating space, taking that breath, maybe even, that helps you to be more effective and efficient.

Celi Arias 09:49

Yes. I think that is the ultimate CEO hack. If you ask any great CEO or leader what makes a great CEO, they're going to give you some iteration of this, right?

Which a CEO is able to take a breath, take a step back and go, wait a minute, where am I? Am I just being emotional right now and reactionary?

Because when you're the CEO and people bring you problems, you go, Oh shit, Oh God, we got to fix that. Oh no, somebody, Oh shit, we got to fix that. Oh shit. We got to, Oh no, Oh no. Right.

So the ability to go, I hear you, I see you, but remember what our current goal is? That that is very hard to do.

But if you can start to do that, it focuses you on the right problems and the right actions. And I'm not saying like fixing everything is bad, it just makes you take longer to get to where you want to go. It's all about time.

Gresham Harkless 10:54

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you sharing that. What would you consider to be a little bit more of what I call CEO nugget?

This could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It could be around your 5 systems for sustained change or anything else that you would tell your younger business self or potentially your favorite client.

Celi Arias 11:11

It's always easier than you're making it. Most likely, there is an easier way, and a lot of times you are the one that's over complicating it.

Gresham Harkless 11:26

That's powerful. Why do you think that is? Why do you think we have this tendency?

Is it because we haven't taken that quote unquote breath and really got clarity on what we're trying to do and how we're trying to do it, or we're so close to it?

Why do you think it happens that we can like over complicate things that maybe could be a lot simpler?

Celi Arias 11:45

I think that because when we are business owners, so much of our own self-worth is wrapped up in what's happening in the business.

Our ego, our identity, our personal values, how we value ourselves, how we want to be seen in the world, our self-worth is all on the table. We've put our identity on the table with the business.

So when something feels difficult or tough, it's very hard for us to actually look at it as a business problem, because there's too much of our own ego and our identity at stake with that problem.

So because we're just too close to it, we over-complicate it. Your business just needs very specific things, right? It just needs you to water it.

Like it needs you to feed it when it's hungry. It needs you to soothe it when it's cry, like tired and crying, right? It needs to be changed because it likes to be clean.

Anything outside of that scope, that baby is like, what are you doing right now? Stop cooing in my face, get out of my face.

That does nothing for me, right? And that's how your business is, but we put a lot of our own stuff on the business, and then it's very hard to go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay.

There's probably a simpler solution to this. If I could just remove all of my stuff, then I can start to look at the business like a business.

And that's easier said than done, okay? And that's also part of the journey. Part of this journey that you're on and becoming a multi-seven figure business owner is going through that journey of learning how to detach your stuff from the business and letting the business grow into what it could be.

Gresham Harkless 13:37

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, now I wanna ask you one of my absolute favorite questions, which you might've already touched on this, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

And our goal is to have different quote unquote CEOs on the show. So, Sully, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Celi Arias 13:51

Well, I think an amazing CEO does 3 things. So we talked about one of them. But I do think an amazing CEO does 3 things really well. They are the visionary, Right?

So they do, they have the superpowers of seeing into the future. They see a future that is possible and they not only are creating the future in the present, right?

But they are getting everybody around them to also get on board and be excited about that future vision.

So that's what I consider a visionary, is somebody who's like, I know you don't see it yet, but I see it. That's a visionary.

Part 2 of being a visionary is that they get people to come along. A great CEO is a motivator, inspirational, knows how to get their friends, families, colleagues, community, clients, audience excited about what they're doing.

When people are getting bored and losing steam and getting tired and they're not seeing it anymore, a great CEO is able to re-inspire and get everybody to stay on board to that future vision that they hold true and they hold possible. That's 2.

And Number 3 is this ability of discernment, right? Which is they have also the ability to kind of see what they're working on and what their team is working on and go, wait a minute, is that the right problem, right?

Does that, I know we're not profitable yet, but does that get us growth, right? The ability to discern what is the right problem to focus on right now, that is the skill that grows you faster.

So those are, to me, those are the top 3 things that a CEO does well.

Gresham Harkless 15:33

Awesome. Well, Celi truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more.

What I want to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know.

And of course, how best people get on view, find out about the accelerator, the coach, all the awesome things that you're working on

Celi Arias 15:50

I think the easiest way to find me, I manage all my socials. So if you ever want to ask me a question, you can look me up as Celi Arias on LinkedIn or on all the other social channels as Celi Grown Ass Business.

Gresham Harkless 16:03

We're gonna have the links and information and the show notes as well too, so that everybody can find out about all the awesome things that accelerate, of course, that CRM as well too. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Celi Arias 16:13

Thank you, you too. And thanks for having me. This was great questions.

Outro 16:16

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CBNation and Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at blue16media.com. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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