I’ve been talking about personal branding on my Instagram, and something that I noticed is that your personal brand and your self-concept go hand in hand. And as Latinas, our self-concept can be all over the place. We were told to do all the things, get all the degrees, and be as successful as possible, but we were also told to be quiet and be humble. That doesn’t make sense, does it? 

Our self-concept dictates our entire lives – and nobody talks about it! Our self-concept decides if we are worthy of taking action, accepting incredible opportunities, and putting ourselves out there. I have a ton of clients who rejected their manifestations because they’re self-concept was so low. But as a business owner, a content creator, or even just as a person, we cannot keep walking around with a low self-concept. We can change it for the better. 

In this week’s episode,  I want to talk to you about the difference between your personal brand and your self-concept, and how your self-concept is the direct reflection and the direct mirror of your life. You can have an amazing personal brand, attract incredible opportunities, and still feel like you’re not worthy of what you’ve manifested. Some of my clients have even gone so far as to reject the very things they were manifesting because of their low self-concept. It’s ok, we’ve all been there. But now, it’s time to take our lives into our own hands and raise our self-concept to match our manifestations.

Resources Mentioned:
EP. 113: Cultura and Cash: Managing Finances & Cultural Expectations w/ Giovanna González
EP. 147: Behind The Scenes of Writing a Book with Giovanna Gonzalez

Follow Erika on:
Instagram @‌theerikacruz
TikTok @‌theerikacruz
LinkedIn

Website:
http://www.theerikacruz.com

How to work with Erika:

Check out our limited-time Black Friday Special for the Courage Driven Latina program!

Join the waitlist for the Magnetic Mastermind here!

Podcast production for this episode was provided by CCST, an Afro-Latina-owned boutique podcast production and copywriting studio. 

Episode Transcript:

Erika: Hello. Hello. Welcome back to this week’s episode of Chin Net Revolution Podcast. This is your host, Erica Cruz, and today I have a good episode for you. I’ve been talking a lot about personal branding on my Instagram as well as in a recent training that I had, and I am going to be talking more about personal brand, but there’s something else that’s really important that goes hand in hand with personal brand and that is your self.

So today in the episode, I want to talk to you about the difference between your personal brand, your self concept, and how your self concept is the direct reflection and the direct mirror of your life. So let’s get into it. What in the world is a personal brand? A personal brand is essentially the external reflection of how it is that you show up in the world.

It’s what people. Perceive about you based [00:03:00] on how you carry yourself. And this could be in the workplace, right? This could be on social media. Um, other things that influence your personal brand is how it is that you speak, what actions you take or don’t take. How it is you engage with other people. Um, again, whether this is at work in your personal relationships, it, it counts for, for all of that.

We all have a personal brand. People have a perception of us. And we typically have the ability to influence that, but sometimes we’re not fully aware of how to influence it, how, how to change it. And this isn’t coming from the perspective of. Oh my gosh. Let’s be people pleasing. That’s totally not what I’m saying here.

I’m speaking about personal brand from the perspective of your friends are talking about an opportunity and your name comes up as, oh my gosh, that’s the right person for this. Or maybe somebody who follows you on Instagram or on TikTok. An opportunity comes up at work and they immediately think [00:04:00] about you.

That’s what we’re talking about with personal branding. It’s not necessarily do people like you or not like you, it’s more about your kind of virtual reputation, if you will. But even more importantly, what I want you to know is that your personal brand isn’t necessarily your logo or specifically your, your aesthetics. Like, yes, that branding can be part of your personal brand, but at the core, it really is who you are, right? Your energy and what your presence, what your content makes people feel.

And a personal brand is important because it ensures that you constantly have options and opportunities. My personal brand is the reason I was able to leave my tech job and start a business because I had built a personal brand online, specifically on TikTok. So when I launched a coaching program, there was a ton of demand for it.

I also did such a good job [00:05:00] at building my personal brand that when I left the tech industry, I still ended up getting calls. From previous tech companies that I had applied to that had denied me, but now because I had built a personal brand, they were actually finding me and recruiters were asking me if I could come interview for positions.

Mind you, before having a personal brand, I wasn’t even considered, but after developing my personal brand and creating some form of influence and impact and energetically showing up in a certain way, then opportunities started coming to me. So I’ll do future episodes. On how to build a personal brand and more details on personal branding, but there’s something that needs to be looked at before you even begin to build a personal brand.

And that is your self concept. 

Your self concept is your identity of yourself. It is the thoughts that you think about yourself, the feelings that you have towards yourself, what actions you do take, [00:06:00] what actions you don’t take, especially when nobody’s watching.

and this opinion that you have of yourself drives every decision that you make in your life, and your self-concept creates your comfort zone. It creates what you feel worthy of and what you don’t feel worthy of. Whether you take the risk or don’t take the risk whether you apply for the job or don’t apply for the job.

Whether you send the text or don’t send the text, whether you post the video or don’t post the video whether you negotiate your salary or don’t. Do you see how your self-concept is the main driver in the quality of your life? It dictates everything. It doesn’t actually matter what other people think about you.

If. You have a self-concept where you think really low of yourself or that you’re not good enough. And at some level we all have a worthiness wound that we’re working through because you may feel worthy of certain things in your life, but maybe you’re working on other areas where you don’t feel [00:07:00] quite worthy yet, or maybe you’re very new to, to maybe being a business owner or very new to creating content or new at your job or a new mom.

So it’s almost like your self-concept, your identity is still catching up. That’s super normal and that’s super valid. But if you are a typical woman of color, which I am, a lot of us were taught to have a more self-sacrificing self-concept, meaning a, a self-concept that’s like, oh, I’m just gonna be humble.

Oh, I’m not gonna really advocate for myself. But that self concept doesn’t take us. To have an abundant magnetic life.

If your self-concept is rooted in people pleasing and perfectionism in working really hard and keeping your head down in self-doubt, then it’s going to show up as visible in your life. The goal is to get us all to a place where our [00:08:00] self-concept is rooted in alignment in self-trust in worthiness. That doesn’t mean that nothing will ever feel scary again. Of course it will, but when we truly believe that we are worth of things, our life completely evolves and changes. So as we’re talking about the self-concept versus our personal brand, your self-concept also dictates your personal brand. So the first thing to start with is actually your self concept. I want you to think about how your personal brand is the symptom, or it’s kind of like the effect, but the cause is your self concept. When you change your self-concept, you, it’s so much easier to build your personal brand because the truth is, I could give you all strategies all day long on how to build your personal brand, but if your self-concept is still rooted in this self-doubt and perfectionism, it’s going to be almost impossible for you to take the action.

It’s like, I’ll give you an example for social media because, that’s just a, the way that we’re kind of building our personal brands nowadays. [00:09:00] So let’s say that you know that you want to pivot in your career, and I give you coaching with like, okay, great, well let’s start to pivot. Let’s start to publish your story and your personal brand on LinkedIn so that you become more visible to recruiters so that whenever you do apply to things and they go check out your LinkedIn, they get to learn more about you, you become more personable.

Maybe other people within your network can connect you with other people and you can get referrals maybe. Recruiters will reach out to you and you’re like, mentally, yeah, that sounds great. But let’s say that you do not feel. Worthy of sharing your story on social media because you are like, oh my gosh, I have nothing important to share.

Or you’re maybe thinking, oh my goodness, I’m full of self-doubt because my old coworkers are on LinkedIn, so they’re going to see me share this. I don’t want to. So that’s an example where it’s not even the, it’s not even personal branding that’s getting in the way. It’s your own self-concept. And this is true for anything in life, right?

Our [00:10:00] self-concept determines. Everything, the the person that we end up with in a romantic relationship, the friend groups, whether we set boundaries or don’t set boundaries, this influences every area of our lives. I also shared, um, something on Instagram not long ago where I shared that not every Latina or woman of color needs to become an entrepreneur, but every Latina and woman of color Le needs to learn entrepreneurial skills. What I mean by those entrepreneurial skills, it’s we need to learn to advocate for ourselves.

We need to learn to sell ourselves. And not in a sleazy way, right? But like let’s say that you are in a job interview, you have to sell yourself, or if you are negotiating your salary, you have to sell yourself. Or if you decide to start a side hustle and sell candles, you have to. Sell yourself. If you want to, help people, like maybe you wanna do these retreats and their [00:11:00] wellness retreats, or breath work retreats or whatever type of retreat, you’re gonna have to sell the retreat or else people aren’t gonna get the transformation.

So, I know that that’s a very valid point that I’m making, but what I’m talking to you about in this episode is almost the step that comes before that. We need to change our self concept in order to be able to take the hard actions, in order to put ourselves out there in order to take.

The actions that are going to get us to the goals that we have and the ambition. Because every woman that I’ve met that’s Latina or woman of color has big goals. But in order to reach our big goals and manifest our dream life, we have to be aware of what our self-concept is.Actually, lemme share a quick story with you. I have had many clients who have a desire of landing podcast interviews and they even had their eyes on specific podcasts that they wanted to be interviewed for, and they were in my program and then they end up manifesting an [00:12:00] invitation for the exact podcast that they wanted to be on.

And both clients, this has happened in two different occasions. It’s actually happened with a lot more people, but two specific clients, and they got the invite in their email. And guess what? They did? Nothing. They didn’t respond for weeks. Why? Because their was telling them. You don’t deserve this interview.

You’re not good enough. You don’t have anything worthy of sharing. It was sabotaging this dream opportunity that they had. Eventually, they got coaching. Eventually, I worked through this self-concept thing with them and they ended up being on the podcast. But I want you to think to a moment in your life when you’ve really wanted something and then you get it.

Then you suddenly have all of this doubt and maybe you take the action, but you’re taking it with a bunch of doubt. Or maybe you don’t take the action, right? Maybe you apply for a specific job and you get an interview and you’re like, oh [00:13:00] my gosh, I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I’m worthy enough for this.

Or maybe you have all intentions to negotiate your salary and you end up backing out. These are all examples of why having a high self-concept is so, so important. And you know what’s so interesting that like as women of color. We have high opinions of other people. Like you probably have such high opinions of your friends, where even if they mess up, you have so much compassion for them.

But when it comes to ourselves, we totally beat ourselves up and we lack compassion. But the thing is that without compassion, it’s so much harder to move ahead. We get hung up on little mistakes, and that blocks us from manifesting the life that we really want to live. And this self-concept, it’s really influenced by a lot of different things. It’s influenced by your direct family, what the environment that you grew up in. Um, your, your upbringing, right? Like maybe the schools that you went to as well, and even your trauma, but just [00:14:00] like the self-concept was shaped with these different influences, like your self-concept is also something that is influenced by jobs, right?

Or relationships. Maybe you were very confident at some point and then you had a super toxic boss and then it kind of. Shattered your self-concept. Maybe you had a strong self-concept, a strong opinion of yourself, but then a toxic relationship or maybe a friend breakup or maybe a breach of trust or maybe some, some type of outside circumstance occurred where you.

Started to shift your opinion of yourself, but just like there were these influences that have created the opinion of ourselves and shifted our opinion of ourselves, we also have the ability to adjust our self-concept so that we feel worthy, we feel abundant, we feel confident,As well as self-trust. We feel like we can trust [00:15:00] ourselves because just as the brain can mold itself to learn the unhelpful stuff, we can remold it to learn the helpful stuff. This is called neuroplasticity in neuroscience, but it doesn’t happen from one moment to another. The way that I’ve described this to my clients, it’s almost like when you first are walking on a trail.

There’s no real, or like, let’s say you’re walking a new trail, there’s no, there’s no path laid out yet, but the more you walk it, the more the path becomes clear and. When we think about sometimes unhelpful thoughts or unhelpful opinions of ourselves, we’ve had these beliefs and these thoughts for so long that those almost represent a highway.

So it’s really easy to get on and it’s really easy to go fast on there. But whenever you are in the process of changing yourself concept, it’s almost like you are creating this new trail and you have to keep walking the trail to keep paving that path. So that’s kind of how neuroplasticity works. But the more you [00:16:00] do it and the more consistent you are, the more the brain actually begins to rewire itself. So while us as women of color, or if you come from an underserved community, you maybe were raised to survive, not necessarily to thrive or to shine, but you get to rewrite that script because I want to remind you that. When it sounds, you know, like, oh, I’m being so selfless, so I don’t think super highly of myself.

But no, that’s actually one of the most selfish things you can do because if you don’t get ahead and if you don’t think highly of yourself and if you don’t shine, then that means the generations that come after you don’t get to benefit from the amazing things and opportunities and resources that you’ve created.

But when you think highly of yourself. Whenever you take the chances, whenever you rewire your brain, whenever you trust yourself, whenever you feel worthy, whenever you build your personal brand, then you’re also able to pass opportunities to other people. I can’t tell you how many successful friends of mine [00:17:00] have handed me opportunities.

Recently, I was on Telemundo National. One of my, the podcast episodes a few podcasts ago talked about that, and this opportunity came because Gigi, the first gen mentor. Is the one who referred me. She was like, Hey, this isn’t a good fit for me, but I think it’d be a good fit for you. And if she would’ve been play playing small and not written her book and not posted on TikTok and not left her her wealth management job, I would’ve never had that opportunity.

But not only because she didn’t play small. Not only did she get ahead, think about the, like hundreds and hundreds of people that have read her book that have started to think about money in a whole different way. By the way, she’s the author of URA and Cash. And I’ve had her on the, podcast twice.

The first time was talking about URA and Cash, and the second time was to talk about how it was that she came about publishing her book and she took the hybrid publishing option. So go ahead and take a look at those episodes. I’m not exactly [00:18:00] sure what episode number they are, but I will put them down below in the show notes, but it’s two different episodes with her. So when your self-concept is very high, everybody benefits is the point that I’m trying to make here. So how do you know where you stand when it comes to your self concept? I have. Some questions, some, some journal prompts, just some reflection things for you. So the first thing I want you to look at, I want you to notice your inner dialogue. How is it that you are speaking to yourself? And would you speak to a friend in that way?

And what you can do is take your journal and just say, my opinion of myself is that. And just let yourself write. Maybe set a three minute timer, maybe a five minute timer. If you have time, set a 10 minute timer and write it all out. Do not filter yourself, and then honestly, ask yourself, is this how I would speak to a friend? The next thing that I want you to do is I want you to take inventory of your actions in the last week, [00:19:00] and I want you to ask yourself, are these actions in alignment with the woman that I want to be? Or are they in alignment with the version of me that’s really afraid that’s, they’re not good enough. So write down every like kind of decision that you made, every action that you, that you took. And then as much as you know, I love affirmations, and I could sit here and say, okay, now like let’s say affirmations. The truth is that affirmations do not work unless you believe them. So what I would love for you to do. Anything that you wrote down regarding the opinion of yourself? So the first question I asked you, you know, like my opinion of myself is that, and then you fill out the rest, any limiting beliefs that are there, how can you challenge those?

Ask yourself. Is that true? So let me, let me start from the beginning because I just told you all a few different things. I just wanna make it really clear what the exercise is. The first exercise is to grab your journal, set a timer and [00:20:00] journal free, write about what your opinion is is of yourself. Okay.

Then there was a second exercise, but I added a second part to the first one. So after you’re done writing everything that you think about yourself, I want you to take a highlighter and highlight any limiting beliefs. Maybe your limiting belief is, oh, I don’t know if I’m good enough to do that, or I’m unorganized, or I just don’t have enough time, or anything that feels like an excuse or a limiting belief.

Highlight it. And then I want you to challenge it like, is this a fact? Yes or no? And the chances are no, right? If it’s an opinion, it’s not a fact. And because you are already saying, no, this is not a fact. Then ask yourself, what is a fact? And start to practice the, the actual fact, not what your opinion is, not your limiting belief about yourself.

I’ll give you an example. I, I’ll give you two examples. We’ll use one that’s about content creation and one that’s about starting a business [00:21:00] because these are common things that people wanna do nowadays. And obviously, you know, this is, we’re talking about personal branding as well. So let’s say that. I’m writing about myself and my goal is that I want to post content on Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn, but I don’t think people will find my story interesting or I’m not good at social media.

Those are both limiting beliefs. None of that’s actually true. The thought. I’m not good at social media. You don’t actually know that unless you’ve tried. And yeah, maybe at the beginning you won’t be great, but you can’t just label yourself as like, oh, I’m not good at this. So the way that I would challenge that would be, is it true that nobody finds my story interesting?

Well, no, I actually don’t know that. Right. So maybe I rewrite this with. I get to share my story and see if it resonates with people or I at least get to try. And then the other one, I’m bad at social media. What if that one became, I am better and better at [00:22:00] everything I practice? I want to give this a try.

Do you see how like these aren’t affirmations that are completely making me feel like. They’re a lie. It’s not like I’m saying I’m the best content creator ever. Like, no, you’re not gonna believe that. But what you are doing is you’re taking your limiting beliefs and you’re changing your self-concept by challenging those limiting beliefs.

So that’s what I want you to do for like first exercise. There’s like part A, part B to that. And then the second exercise is take the inventory of the actions that you’ve taken over the last week, maybe the last month, and then if they are out of alignment with who it is that you wanna be now ask yourself, what actions can I take in the week coming up that are in alignment with myself?

So remember, your personal brand is how the world sees you, and your self-concept is how you see you. Your self-concept is literally the most important thing of your life. [00:23:00] Regardless of what your goals are, your self-concept is everything. This is why inside of Courage Driven Latina, we’ve done many like kind of data surveys and things like that.

A hundred percent of people in courage driven Latina. Once they’re like at the end of it, say that the program positively shifted the way that they see themselves. In other words, people changed their self-concept from feeling like they weren’t good enough and they couldn’t trust themselves to maybe not being the most confident person in the world, but growing their confidence, trusting themselves, making decisions that are aligned with them, and like that has led to so many beautiful things.

Businesses being built, podcasts being start, content being posted, other lives being changed. I mean, literally the transformation that we see from a self content perspective in the program is [00:24:00] unbelievable. And for the success rate for this to be a hundred. That it’s not even a surprise to me, but it’s literally the, metric I am the most proud of.

So if this podcast episode resonated with you, be sure to send me a DM and let me know this is actually going to be released when I have just emailed my. Email list about a Black Friday special. So I’ve never done this before, but we are actually reopening the doors for Courage Driven Latina just for seven days, and we do have a Black Friday special, and this Black Friday special includes a 90 minute.

Intensive with me where we get to cover your personal brand and your self concept. So I’ve actually created a custom GPT that, which is like a custom AI bot. To help you identify your personal brand and how it is that that can support you with pivoting your career, starting or growing your business. All that, like whatever your goal [00:25:00] is, your personal brand will help you.

But like I just discussed in this podcast episode, your self concept is the most important thing. So if you would like my help with your self concept. And with adjusting that you get to not only work with me one-on-one for 90 minutes, you then get to work with me inside of courage driven Latina for 12 months.

Like that. Continued support is life changing. I mean, I’ve seen people just within six months be completely different, but a year, and I will share this. I do not know if this program will continue to be a 12 month program. Coming 2026. So if this is of interest to you, get in now. You can visit the link down below, or you can just go to courage driven latina.com where you can learn more about the program.

You can secure your spot, or you can schedule a call with me. But this bonus is not going to be around for long because this is the Black Friday bonus. [00:26:00] It’s actually going to go live on the 26th, so a day after this is live posted, if you’re listening to this in real time until December 3rd. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

So go to courage driven latina.com. You can book a call with me. My availability’s a little limited just because of the holiday, but um, if you know that this is something that you want to do, secure your spot. You can DM me if you have any questions, but even if that’s not a good fit for you, take what I said in this podcast episode.

To heart your self-concept is the most important thing. If you have kids, pay attention to the way they think and talk about themselves. Pay attention to their self-concept. If you have nieces and nephews hype up their self-concept, right, hype up the opinion that you have of them, and ensure that they have a positive opinion of themselves because your self-concept will determine every decision that you make in your life.

[00:27:00] It is. Literally a reflection of what your life ends up being like. So, alright, y’all, this ended up being a longer episode than I thought. I was like, oh, this is gonna be so quick, but obviously this is something I’m very passionate about. Thank you for hanging out with me. Happy holidays to all of you, and I will see you next week. [00:28:00]