In this revealing episode, Esther Zeledon, President of Be.Act.Change, shares how success itself can keep you stuck as a dissatisfied employee and how to break free into purpose. If you’re in a great job that still feels like the wrong life and wonder whether to stay or start something of your own, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– What it takes to move from dissatisfaction to purposeful action with clarity
– Why inheriting dreams from others leads to misalignment and eventual regret
– How to uncover your unique problem-solving patterns before launching anything
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello, and welcome, welcome once again to the Start, Scale, and Succeed podcast-the only podcast that grows with you through all seven levels of your journey as a founder. I’m your host Scott Ritzheimer, and today we’re talking about the strangest kind of stuck. You have what just about anyone would call a great job, where everything on paper is right, and yet you still feel like you’re living the wrong life. The trap is that your success is the thing that’s keeping you stuck as a dissatisfied employee. Because let’s be honest, nobody quits a good job over a feeling that they can’t explain. But there’s so much more that you can do starting today, and here to help show us the way is Dr. Esther Zeladon, who’s an award-winning author, global speaker, and coach. She guides founders and changemakers to clarify their vision, create actionable plans, and persevere.
A former diplomat with a PhD from UC Berkeley, Esther has worked across more than 100 countries, supporting leaders, entrepreneurs, and communities in unlocking their purpose and creating meaningful impact. She’s the author of the Amazon number one best-selling book, “Create Your Limitless Life on Your Terms, which has won multiple awards and helped 1000s of people align their work and life with their deeper mission. Well, Esther, so excited to have you here, and and in many ways, I I get the sense, and and you say this in the book that that was your life, and and and this is not something that you’ve read about in a book somewhere or studied, you know, from afar, but it’s something that you live. Tell us more. When did you find yourself in this position, and what’d you do about it?
Dr. Esther Zeledón
Yeah, yeah, and it’s a it’s real. Sometimes people don’t really understand it, right? Because they’re like, “What do you mean you left this? You were at the executive level. You had climbed the ladder, especially as as a female Latina, right? Had shattered, as they call, right, the glass ceilings. But I think for me, it was I had gone to this point where I had I had used my problem solving approach, right? So we all have this unique way of solving problems. It’s really unique that everyone else can see, but we can’t see, and that’s what we bring to our jaws, was bring to our orgs. And I had used it, and I had raised this money, deployed this money, but then at the point of when it got to the point where it was just like managing and operating, I just kind of felt my light fade, like I, you know. And then it was like it-it was like the next step would be to go and redo it again. And there was something about that that I was like, this is not my legacy. And actually, I read this in my book because you know there was something there.
I had this great, you know, I had like school paid for. So if anybody doesn’t know about the diplomatic career, you have a full package. You know, you get your school paid for, you have the fancy house, you have the the money, and all this stuff. And I remember going home for Christmas, and my dad was looking at. I mean, I and I go to him. You know, I really, I’m really thinking of like I really want to leave this, and I really want to start my own thing. And he looked at me. He’s like, “You can’t do that. You have a family. You have this job. What do you mean? This was everything we worked towards. And I remember like having this moment, and I like shouted, which I rarely do to him. And I was like, “That’s not my legacy. And they all just stared at me with these big eyes, going, “Okay, I’m not sure what’s going on here. But that’s what it was. You know, when I looked at my future, that’s not what I saw myself doing, and it’s not. And it was a misalignment that was inside that I was like, I am meant to do myself. And on top of that, you know, we all have we all have these legacies, these things where we want to bring bring our solutions to right. We want to feel valued. We want to feel we want to feel utilized. Right, we want to feel like we’re using our approach, and I couldn’t explain it at that time, but I knew this that I just had to go and really see for myself if I could do entrepreneurship, and so that’s that was that moment. And then, for some people, they’ll just jump right away. I took um, I made a plan, like, okay, I’m going to you know have six months transition everyone because I had like a lot of like staff and salaries and things, but I was like, this is this is what I’m going to do.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow, wow. So one of the things that is so important, and and I want to frame this conversation for anyone who’s listening is like I’m not trying to figure out if I’m going to start my business or nonprofit. I did that a long time ago. The rest of this conversation is going to matter to you because if you haven’t done some of the things we’re going to talk about, you can start your own business and you can be successful at it, and you will pay the piper eventually for it, because so much of the challenge that I see when I’m working with these later level founders, like level four, level five, they’re having these this kind of crisis of faith in the in themselves and in their organization. So much of it roots back to they didn’t deal. With this in day one, and it’s hung around in the background ever since. And so, for someone who’s who’s in that place, they’ve got the job, and it’s not satisfying. We’ve got something for you. But for those of you who are a little later, stay tuned because you’re going to find something in this that that’s really important. So, Esther, I want to start with from from that point. I want to jump to this idea of inheriting dreams,
Dr. Esther Zeledón
Yes.
Scott Ritzheimer
What what does that mean, and and and what’s the problem with it?
Dr. Esther Zeledón
Yeah, yeah, and I’m so glad you brought up the point of that it’s for later too, because it doesn’t matter if you’re a founder, nonprofit, or anything, right? If you’re misaligned, you’re going to feel it at any time you’ve climbed whatever glass ceiling you have, and when you’re talking about inherit, you know, inheriting is that like when we we see this a lot with like different parents and generations. If you have not done like you have not fulfilled your purpose and purposes, multi identities, which we can get into, right? So like a lot of things encompass your purpose, your future identity, your resilience identity, your the legacy you want to leave all that. If you have not really done your purpose right, and if you followed some check marks for external validation and not really gone after what you did, we then risk passing it on to the next generation.
It doesn’t even necessarily mean your. It can mean your direct children, which is where we see the most, but it could also mean when you’re mentoring, could also mean when you’re giving advice, right? You’re passing on this unfulfilled thing because you’ve created this belief that it’s not for me. This belief that I ran out of time. This belief, well, I made this decision, so now I’m here. So instead, I’m going to pass on to the next generation that they should do all the things that I I didn’t do, but the danger of that is that when we’re mentoring passing by, we’re passing on what we what our compass what we wanted to do, and then putting it on their shoulders to carry, and that’s part of my story too, right? Because even though when you look at it on paper, it’s probably the same with these level four business, or when you’re starting, right?
On paper, it looked like you know I was giving back, right? It aligned with some of my values, which was meaningful work, right? Contribution, but in the end, it wasn’t about like there was still some misalignment with some of my values, some of my decision making framework. It wasn’t necessarily part of that legacy I wanted to me, and so even like you were saying, even making the even when I left and decided to make the business, that had to be answered and dealt with. Of going, am I creating this for myself or for someone else? Am I really creating that legacy and the impact that I visualize? And that’s going to create a different type of thing. That, for example, other people may have. You know, you create different businesses. I was like, “What is that? What kind of service do I want to give? How do I want to service people? What what is that impact? Right. Those questions have to be answered because if not, you start building whatever it is, or you know, with your job, this you start building something based on externalities and not based on yourself, and you end up in the same place again, and or you don’t do it, and then you pass on to that generation, and you’re pushing them to then follow. So then we’re creating that same exact model that we’re in, where society is telling us to have this these certain check marks and paps when it might not even align with our values and our impact and our legacy that we want to leave.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s so true, and and you said something in passing earlier in the episode that that I I think applies to this. And so many times, founders in the making, right? Let’s just zoom into that group. Will recognize the dissatisfaction of their work, and they’ll recognize rightly that they’re they’re going to go out and start their thing. But there’s still space in between those two things, and there’s lots of practical things that have to happen in there. And we’ve talked about those on the show. But one of the intensely practical things that we can get by with, you know, not knowing that we missed it, is not dealing with this purpose thing.
Dr. Esther Zeledón
Yes,
Scott Ritzheimer
And and so one of the things that I I I talk with folks about in this space is you need to move from dissatisfied employee not to entrepreneur. You need to move to being purposeful.
Dr. Esther Zeledón
Yes, that purpose needs to.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah, and and so I love I love that you’ve you’re identifying hey we’re borrowing these purposes from other sources sometimes or or we’re just kind of gliding through life without them but how do we go about getting beyond that how do we move from that dissatisfaction to a a purposefulness that we can move into the next level with.
Dr. Esther Zeledón
Yeah, that’s a great question, right? And it’s like the first step is creating a psychological divide with yourself, and you’re like, “What is that, Esther? Okay, but it’s asking yourself big questions, like if you had, because a lot of times these decisions, you know, is just what you’re talking about, right? You can go from disgruntled employee to one. But then sometimes scarcity mindset takes over, like oh, I need to make money now, or all these pools, or I need to now make the same thing, or or or sometimes safety’s trauma response for us, and then we immediately start trying to like follow and mimic everyone else’s patterns. So that intentionality-that’s why that’s what I was mentioning to mention to you about that six-month gap for me, it wasn’t even just about transitioning people, but it was also making sure that whatever I built was aligned with my life’s purpose. Because if not, I knew I was going to end up back in the same place. I would make all the check marks again, entrepreneurship, and then end up again going, “What am I doing? What is this for? Why did I invest all this time in this? And so part of that is, and that, and that can mean different timelines for different people.
Is sitting with yourself and asking yourself, if I had unlimited resources, what global problem would I solve, and how? Because then you understand what are my patterns in solving problems, right? Because sometimes we focus so much on like, oh, I didn’t want to work on that job because I was micromanaged, or these very like superficial things. But sometimes it’s a lot deeper. It’s because I couldn’t, I couldn’t solve problems the way I wanted to, or I couldn’t, you know, I couldn’t do the things that I want to be utilized for. But you got to know what that is first, because if not, then you’re going to fall into the same trap again. So that question of $40 billion of what would I do with that. The problem you pick is not as important, right? A lot of your listeners right now would pick maybe water, homelessness, you know, climate change, scarcity mindset. What matters is how you answer that. So, what is that first thing you reach for? What’s the second thing you do? What’s that third thing? You know, we could even do it here, but like it’s like, what is that first thing? Do you connect people. Do you first research? Do you first think about?
Ooh, well, like for me, I would go first into being like, why is this happening? Right. I go on this whole root cause. What are the patterns? And then you know, and that makes sense. Those my books about what are your patterns, right? And then from there, I look at the incentives that people have and create awareness, and then boom! Once we know it, we can go and grow, and then that’s when, when knowing that pattern, I realized ah, that’s why my job was misaligned because I did that for a while, and then once that stopped, it became more operational. I wasn’t using my problem-solving approach anymore, right? So then I knew exactly when that was happening to me and why I wasn’t doing it. So when I went to make a business, I’m like, I need to make a business where that is part of my growth, and I can grow with that, right? And so you have to spend some time, and and that’s just one piece. The next, you know, the next exercise, and and that’s what the workbook does. It doesn’t have very easy questions, but it’s actually much deeper. It’s looking at all these multiple identities you have and knowing what are my patterns. So next one is, imagine yourself sitting in front of you. That’s 20 years from now, 40 years from now. What are they telling you? What are they doing? How are they living? Right, and talk and have them talk to you in present, because that gives you insights on what do I value? How do I want my day to look like? Right? What is the impact I want to make? Because if you’re building something that does completely doesn’t match that, that’s already a red flag, right?
Dr. Esther Zeledón
And the things a lot of times we have that answers in us, but it’s all the noise, and so it’s taking that time to really study what are my patterns, and then even understanding what have I overcome and how that resilience piece. Because guess what, that’s always going to keep happening to you. So how do I also create those structures where I’m thinking about that, anticipating that? So it also doesn’t stop me from going after my purpose, right? That’s equally as important as even going after it, right? So taking that time to really dig that, and that’s why that time frame is really dependent on you. Because if you’ve never asked these things to yourself for the first time, the first time you do it’s really emotional. It’s really confusing, and and sometimes you can be like, “What did I do in my life? And those feelings are normal. And and I just read this really great post the other day about the Toms founder. He talks a lot about this because if you see him on paper, he built this great Toms, right? Family, we all know them. But he talks about that he didn’t keep with his purpose, right? So he had this like impact he kept with, but he didn’t keep it on through the growth, and then he lost himself in it. So it’s something you have to also revisit. You know, it doesn’t matter if you’re pre like like we’re talking about right one or four. You got to constantly because you’re making decisions constantly and looking at different opportunities. Whether you’re leaving a job or whether you’re already in stage four of your company, you have to always think: Am I still in the alignment of my purpose? Am I still making decisions that align with the impact I want to make?
Scott Ritzheimer
And what a tremendous advantage for a founder who does get into the game to do it armed with that. Just yeah, can’t can’t say enough about it. The. So many different ways I want to go with it, but we we promise our our listeners to keep this short. So what I want to do, I want to I want to make room for a question that I ask all my guests, and and I’m going to ask if you’re very interested to see what you have to say here. But the question is this: What is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish every founder or pre-founder listening today knew?
Dr. Esther Zeledón
Okay, that’s a great one. So, pre-founder, any stage, I think the biggest secret I can tell you is that it’s 90% in your mind, right? And so, like, there is a huge action piece, but if you don’t believe it, and you don’t believe it’s of value, and you don’t believe the world needs it, and you know that, then no one else will. Like you know, when we look at pitch decks, these beautiful ones, right? There’s all these structured things that all of them have, but in the end, what you’re doing is creating the story of why they should believe in you or your business, and that, and so the more clear you are in that work we’re just talking about, the more it’s going to echo through and it’s going to land, and so I think that’s the the biggest secret because people spend so many time, so much time and effort on that part to make it like everyone else’s, but it’s about your own story, visions, that all of that stuff that’s based on you believing it and you knowing that value that you bring. That’s outside of the conventional things, how you solve problems, and the impact you want to make.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yes, so good, so good. It’s. Yeah, it’s just so important to every every part of the journey. Now, one of the things that I really liked about the book and the workbook is when when you say, “Okay, what’s your purpose? That’s such a gigantic question that it’s just like instantly our brains turn off, and and and every other part of us, like we just like it, just feels too big. But with the book, it’s just so practical. And so I’m, I’m wondering, how can folks get a copy of the book? How can they get a copy of the workbook? Where can they find out more so they can take that next step and do it well?
Dr. Esther Zeledón
Yeah, definitely. You can find it on Amazon, Barnes Noble, anywhere. And Scott, I can also send you a link that people can download the Kindle for free. Because for me, it’s about you having this information, arming yourself. Because the more of us that are in alignment and feel abundant, the more that we collectively can make impact. Right, the more that we can then make these work environments these great places that we all want to be in. So, this is like bigger than myself, right? Again, this is about purpose, right? I also want to put that all these concepts we just talked about-it’s made really easy for you and break it down because I felt that it was like that, such an overwhelming question when I was when I was younger, and I wasn’t really given direction. Like, what are those questions that I can explore and really understand this myself? And that was the purpose in writing the books. That no one else has to feel that way, overwhelmed about it. You can do an exercise a day, you know, 15 minutes, and you’re gonna get that clarity and that next direction that you need, so that you can be fulfilled. And then instead of us telling other people what they should do, we’re going to empower them to go after what they want to do.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, that’s excellent. The book “Creating Your Limitless Life on Your Terms“. We’ll get the link in the show notes for you. You can go straight there, and yeah, highly recommend it. Esther, thank you so much for being on and sharing with us today. This is one of those conversations that probably could have gone a very long time. You made my my job keeping it short quite difficult, but really appreciate you taking your time and spending it here with us today. It means the world. And for those of you watching and listening, you know that your time and attention also mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Dr. Esther Zeledón
Thank you.
Scott Ritzheimer
Hey everyone, Scott Ritzheimer here. Thank you so much for listening to the Start Scale and Succeed podcast. I hope this episode gave you exactly what you need for the level you’re in right now. If you want to discover what level you’re in, take our 10 question Founders Evolution Quiz for free at foundersquiz.com. That’s foundersquiz.com. It’ll pinpoint exactly where you are and give you tailored tips to move forward and reach that next level in your journey as a founder. If you got something out of today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, or review. It helps us reach more founders like you, and let’s be honest, it means a ton to me, my team, and all our incredible guests. So keep starting, scaling, and succeeding, and I’ll see you in the next episode.
Contact Dr. Esther Zeledón
Dr. Esther Zeledón is an award-winning author, global speaker, and coach who guides founders and changemakers to clarify their vision, create actionable plans, and persevere. A former diplomat with a PhD from UC Berkeley, Esther has worked across more than 100 countries, supporting leaders, entrepreneurs, and communities in unlocking their purpose and creating meaningful impact. She is the author of the Amazon #1 bestselling book Creating Your Limitless Life (on Your Terms), which has won multiple awards and helped thousands of people align their work and life with their deeper mission.
Want to learn more about Esther Zeledon’s work at Be.Act.Change? Check out her website at https://beactchange.com/
Connect with Dr. Esther through her LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/drestherzeledon/
Get a free Kindle copy of Dr. Esther Zeldon’s book Creating Your Limitless Life: On Your Terms at https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycbxup6Gwy3bpeZY4Py9PmHpPPtLceyv2dMbp4CXnZa96w4GlQXcgQShd5T6JHdYfLWC4/exec