Episode 013
Alyssa Gasca
Can you work less, make more than you did in corporate, and still be a great mother? In this episode of Women’s Million Dollar Conversations, Alice Tang sits down with consultant Alyssa Gasca. Alyssa opens up about the “massive shift” she experienced when she realized her belief that she couldn’t be a good mom and a high earner was just a story she was telling herself.
Alyssa discusses how she moved from a blue-collar background of “frugality and hard work” to a vision of abundance where money is a tool for doing good. If you have ever felt like you were betraying your roots by striving for wealth, this conversation will help you reconcile your ambition with your integrity.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
-How to identify and rewrite the limiting beliefs that act as “mental restrictions.”
-The power of the question: “What decisions would I make if I knew I had enough?”
-Why women struggle to charge market rates and how to overcome the confidence gap.
-Why “good talent always rises to the top” regardless of the environment.
"Decide how you would act if you already hit your goal and move in that direction."
[00:00:20] Alice Tang: Hello, Alyssa Gasca good afternoon. Thank you for granting. 15 minutes, time to talk about the million dollar woman conversation. So let’s begin.
What relationship do you have with money?
[00:00:36] Alyssa Gasca: Looking back now on my life. I don’t think I realized how many of my big life decisions were driven by that feeling of not having enough many choices that I made in my life, career choices, financial decisions, vacations to take, or not whether to purchase something or not something as little as a shirt I really liked, or, some earrings that made me happy. [00:01:00] So many decisions were driven from a viewpoint of scarcity of, I don’t have enough to do that. And I don’t think I ever realized how big of a role that played in my life until probably about two years ago. When I asked myself, what would it feel like if I had enough?
How would I walk in my life each day? And what decisions would I make if I knew I actually did have enough money? And things just started opening up, it just, I felt this level of restriction that I had placed on myself mentally for years just free. I felt free from that restriction. And actually there was an important thing that happened, the first year that I left my corporate job and started working for myself.
I had a daughter who was infant, and it’s part of why I left my corporate job was I wanted the freedom to be with her at home when I wanted to, and to volunteer in her school. And I still wanted to do the work that I knew I could do and get paid while doing it. And that was when I met you and [00:02:00] I got a financial plan in place.
Anyway, I went to this seminar that year. And the coach asked us to write down what our most limiting belief was. And it was the first time I wrote down and actually said out loud, I cannot be a good mother and make the amount of money I had been making at my corporate job, I would never be able to make that much again in a given year and also show up as the mom.
I had no role models for that. I didn’t see it out there so I just believe that. And then we did this exercise with the coach and I started realizing I don’t have to believe that anymore. I can believe something different. And that was a massive shift for me when I started saying, what would it look like, or be like, to actually believe that I can make more money than I made in a corporate job and work less and be a great mother.
And that was 15 years ago and I’ve ended up, you know, living into that vision of what I was looking for in a role model externally, it’s I think I’ve done a good job, or I feel in integrity with my parenting and I have [00:03:00] earned good money doing it and still love what I’m doing, and still don’t work as many hours as I was in the corporate world.
[00:03:06] Alice Tang: Okay. This is so insightful. It’s really a shifting of the mindset when you believe you can and you have. It really opens up a lot of opportunities. So if our mind is stuck with, I never have enough, or I have to work certain way to get to certain level, or either you make a lot of money or you are a good mother, you cannot be both.
[00:03:33] Alyssa Gasca: Yes.
[00:03:34] Alice Tang: Those are the limiting beliefs or the mindset that we tell ourself that end up being reality, because whatever we think is going to be reality.
[00:03:45] Alyssa Gasca: Yes.
[00:03:46] Alice Tang: It manifests to it.
[00:03:48] Alyssa Gasca: And I come from a very liberal family background. And we come from immigrants and so we had a very strong family ethic of, working hard saving money, being [00:04:00] frugal is good. And that corporations and big money and people who are trying to just be rich is bad.
And I’m not saying it’s that black and white but certainly the way that I was brought up was blue collar and that working hard and saving money was a value. And so to then find myself in a corporate world and in a job where I’m advising companies, I’m advising them on how to make more money through their people, but it’s still money is good.
With money you can do good things. You can be a good person and it isn’t evil. That was a real big shift as well. And one that I think when we come from a family of origin, or a blue collar background, or maybe a background where our families weren’t college educated. It can almost feel like a betrayal, or like you’re, maybe afraid to be honest about that you are striving for these things and that it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. I can want to have more money because I could do more good in the world with it. And it doesn’t mean that I’m not, being true to my roots or being a bad person or [00:05:00] being greedy, is the word.
[00:05:02] Alice Tang: Awesome. Love it. All right. What is the number one piece of advice you would give to another woman who is looking to hit their million dollar goal? Whether again, is saving up to a million dollars or landing a million dollar deal.
[00:05:15] Alyssa Gasca: Yeah
I would say, I think there’s two things. Thing one is what decision would you make or decisions would you make if you already had hit that goal and move in that direction? And number two, imagine that you’re already that person who has that money and how would you act and behave and show up if that was the case, what would you choose to do if that were the case?
[00:05:46] Alice Tang: Very good. Very good. Love it. What is the biggest bias you have faced around your professional career expertise on your path to success? From others or from [00:06:00] yourself?
[00:06:00] Alyssa Gasca: Yes. Oh, over and over again. And still I struggle from a I’ve been given the feedback many times, and I have a really ongoing internal chatter with myself about I’m not charging enough for my services or giving away too much for free. Part of it is I really love what I do and I really love my clients. And I really love helping people, that being said. I think that it is easy for me to not place as much financial value on it, that I hate to say it, but the white man would, and I’ve been charging that should be charging three times that, multiple times I’ve been told by peers who are men who do the work I do that they’re charging way more than I charged for similar services.
So I think that’s the bias is I think. Both as a woman and as someone who is service [00:07:00] first, I do this work because I really believe in the difference that it makes. And I love the people I serve. Then I am less likely to charge what I might be able to charge on the market for it, because, it isn’t inside of me and I don’t know that I, nobody’s ever asking to be charged more for what you do.
[00:07:14] Alice Tang: You made me think of something and, hopefully when I say it out loud, we can look at this instead of, feeling oh, I’m offended. Does it, have anything to do with confidence or self confidence?
[00:07:29] Alyssa Gasca: Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:07:31] Alice Tang: So I hope you’re not offended.
[00:07:33] Alyssa Gasca: I’m not offended at all. I think that’s very common experience that many of us have that we don’t talk about it. If you start getting under the layers of why wouldn’t I charge more? It’s because I would have to be someone who’s so confident in, part of it is I’m selling my own consulting services. I can sell other people way better than I have to sell myself because it’s hard to separate who I am from what [00:08:00] I do in the type of work that I do. That being said, it’s remarkable how easy it is for me to sell and value someone else doing the same thing I do because it’s not me.
So yeah. There’s definitely a relationship there.
[00:08:13] Alice Tang: What is a piece of advice that has made the biggest impact to you?
[00:08:21] Alyssa Gasca: Oh, I know. And, I just shared this with my daughter yesterday actually, we were talking about her choice to go to college and what she wants to do when she grows up.
And she said to me I feel like I should work this summer because I’m worried about money. And I said, listen, someone told me something once. And I’m going to share it with you now. Cause I wish they would’ve shared it with me earlier. This came from a friend of mine who, Sherry Cadsawan as a recruiter, she’s local. And I worked with her for years, in our corporate job. And then she had left a corporate job to start, a freelance [00:09:00] consultant recruiting business. And then she’d got a job offer and went back inside another big company. And after I had started consulting my first big consulting job. The company I was working with, offered me a job.
And I saw, Sherry in a coffee shop and I said, oh, she said, how’s it going? And I said, it’s going great. I’m doing this project and I’m really liking it, but they really liked me and want to hire me. And, it would be great. I’d have a steady paycheck. I wouldn’t have to worry about selling myself and the pricing.
And she goes, Alyssa don’t cave. And I said, what do you mean? And what she told me is she said, good talent, meaning good people always rise to the top. And she said, you are someone who, when you set your mind to something, you do it.
And so whether you are working in a company or trying to run your own business or, putting your mind to something else. You’re someone that once you put your mind to it, you’re going to rise to the top. And so stay the course you worked, she knew I had put a lot of [00:10:00] years into this other job and that it took a lot for me to go out on my own and that all of that self doubt and all the questions that I had as a new entrepreneur, she was familiar with that.
But what she was saying is you’re going to figure it out and you’re going to be successful because that’s what you do. That’s who you are. It doesn’t matter what kind of an environment you’re in. And I so appreciated that Because I certainly didn’t see myself that way, especially when I was newly starting out as an entrepreneur.
I, I could see all the things I didn’t know. And my daughter. I said that to her, I said, you’re someone who gets good grades or someone who, you try different things and you’re not going to be the best at everything. But you are someone who, when you set a goal, you work hard to accomplish it.
And so you’re always going to be able to make more money as a teenager right now at 17, when I was signers, I don’t want you to quit your job, keep your job. It’s fun to have money. And it’s good to have that income. And there’s confidence that comes with that. But. You’re going to have enough money down the road cause you’re going to be someone who sets their goals on something and who achieves those things. And that, that advice [00:11:00] of good talent always rises to the top. And if you’re someone who is someone who sets and achieves your goals and is working hard well enough to do it, you’re going to be just fine on whatever path you choose.
That was a game changer for me. It changed my life and I still, to this day, I’m friends with Sherry and remind her. She helped me with that.
[00:11:16] Alice Tang: She is wonderful. Alyssa thank you so much.
Alyssa Gasca has been driving organizational change and building high performing teams for over 20 years. She spent the first half of her career at Intel, leading performance improvement and global change projects in a variety of corporate training, organizational development, and strategic planning roles. There she learned the importance of teamwork, discipline, and sustainable results and had the opportunity to build teams that crossed geographies, business groups and organizational levels.
Alyssa started her consulting practice (formerly Alyssa Gasca Consulting) in 2007 to help growing businesses solve tough problems through their people. Since then, SPARK Executive Solutions has grown and developed a reputation for their unique approach, which balances strategy with execution and relationships with results. In addition to leading companies (including top global brands) through large-scale transformation efforts, she has also designed and led hundreds of workshops for over 40 organizations across 15 countries, and has helped thousands of individuals build their leadership, management, and interpersonal skills.
Alyssa holds an MA in Adult Education from Portland State University with a focus on Corporate Training & Development, and a BA in Psychology from Oregon State University.