Building Success Through Teamwork with Anne Garcia, Founder of Dklutr

How essential is a strong team dynamic for business growth and success?

In this episode, Becca welcomes Anne Garcia, a dear friend, business partner, and the creative mind behind Creative Paradigms & Solutions Inc. (CPSI), also known as Team Dklutr. Anne shares her journey from corporate banking in the Philippines to becoming a successful entrepreneur leading a dynamic digital marketing agency.

Anne and her team specialize in various digital marketing services to help clients grow their businesses and achieve their goals through innovative online solutions. She emphasizes the importance of trust and teamwork, valuing the power of collaboration and community in driving success and fostering a supportive work environment.

Anne's Journey and Dklutr’s Mission:

Anne Garcia leads a team of talented digital marketers offering comprehensive online solutions such as website design, podcast production, social media management, SEO optimization, email marketing, and YouTube services. The team’s mission is to help clients reclaim their time and amplify their reach through effective digital marketing strategies.

How Anne and Becca Connected:

Becca met Anne three years ago through a referral from another podcast host. Anne and her team have been essential in managing Becca’s podcast, social media, graphics, and website design. This partnership has been a significant part of Becca’s success.

Anne’s Background and the Formation of CPSI:

Transitioning from a decade-long corporate career in banking to becoming a virtual assistant during the pandemic, Anne, together with her husband Carl and one of her closest friends, Rhon, built a three-headed power team that found success in managing podcast launches. This success led to the expansion of their agency. Since then, CPSI has grown to a team of 12-20, handling various aspects of digital marketing.

The Importance of Team and Community:

Anne emphasizes the power of collaboration, community, and team synergy. She believes that no one is truly self-made; success often results from standing on the shoulders of others and working together. Anne values the unique strengths and talents each team member brings, contributing to the agency’s overall success.

Anne’s Passion for Digital Marketing:

With a deep passion for communication and marketing, Anne has honed her skills to help brands define their personality and effectively reach their audience. She thrives on organizing and streamlining workflows, allowing clients to concentrate on their core strengths and passions.

Building Success Together

Anne encourages listeners to trust in others and the power of community. She advocates embracing collaboration and relying on the support of a team to achieve greater success. While individual achievements are important, collective effort often leads to more significant accomplishments.

Key Moments You Won't Want to Miss:

• Anne's Transition from Banking to Entrepreneurship: Discover how Anne moved from a decade-long career in corporate banking in the Philippines to launching her digital marketing agency.
• The Birth of Team Dklutr: Learn about the pivotal moment during the pandemic when Anne and her husband successfully ventured into podcast management, leading to the expansion of CPSI.
• Becca’s Partnership with CPSI: Hear how Becca connected with Anne three years ago, and how CPSI has played a crucial role in managing Becca’s podcast, social media, graphics, and website design.
• The Power of Teamwork: Anne shares her insights on why trust, collaboration, and community are essential for achieving greater success, emphasizing that collective effort often leads to more significant accomplishments.
• Anne’s Love for Digital Marketing: Explore how Anne’s passion for communication and marketing drives her to help brands develop their personality and connect with their audience through innovative digital solutions.
• Empowering Message on Collaboration: Anne advises the importance of trusting others, embracing collaboration, and relying on team support to enhance personal and professional growth.

Empowering Thoughts to Take With You:

• “I lean heavily on the power of the team, the community, support, collaboration, and the synergy.” — Anne Garcia
• “I've always believed that nobody's ever self-made.”  — Anne Garcia
• “You made it this far but you didn't do it all by yourself.” — Anne Garcia
• “I want to help businesses declutter their workflow and fix and streamline their processes and services so that they can focus on the things they love.” — Anne Garcia
• “If you are able to trust someone,  they will be there for you.” — Anne Garcia
• “There is a beautiful unfolding that can support you if you take that step, and sometimes you just need to take action and get embraced by the beautiful unfolding. And you also gain confidence that you can do the thing.” — Becca Powers
• “Behind every self-made person is an army of people.” — Becca Powers
• “If you have those super big dreamy goals and you're going for it, surround yourself with the team, because at the end of the day, It's going to be hard to achieve everything by yourself.” — Becca Powers
• “We're meant to be connected.” — Becca Powers

About Anne:

Anne Garcia is the Agency Owner and Creative Director of Creative Paradigms & Solutions Inc. (CPSI), where she leads a team of talented digital marketers dedicated to helping clients reclaim their time and amplify their reach through comprehensive and creative online solutions. With over four years of experience running her agency, Anne has developed a keen eye for design, a passion for podcasting, and a knack for generating leads and conversions.

Whether building a stunning website, producing a captivating podcast, managing a vibrant social media presence, creating a profitable digital course, or designing an irresistible lead magnet, the team at CPSI has the skills and expertise to deliver results that exceed expectations. They also offer SEO optimization, email marketing, outreach, and YouTube services to ensure clients have a strong and consistent online presence. CPSI’s mission is to help clients grow their businesses, reach their audiences, and achieve their goals through digital marketing.

Connect with Anne:

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

Mentioned on the Show:

• Book a call to discover ways how Team Dklutr can partner with you in amplifying your brand and reach through digital marketing: Dklutr Digital Marketing Agency

Follow Becca Powers:

• Website
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

We Want to Hear From You!

Share your journey of building a dream team, embracing collaboration, and leveraging the strengths of others to achieve your goals.

Connect with us on social media or leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your stories inspire us and highlight the transformative power of teamwork, trust, and community in achieving success. 

Let’s celebrate how working together can elevate our dreams and create a ripple of positive change!

Welcome to another episode of the empowered half-hour. I have with me a dear friend, business partner, and vendor. She's many people to me, and she is the owner of Dklutr. I want to give you guys a little bit of a reference point of why I'm bringing her to the show and how I know her.

The Story of Team Becca and Team Dklutr

I got connected to Anne about three years ago when I was on a podcast and I wanted to create one. I like the host I was with, and I asked, who do you use for your podcast production and management? And then I got referred to Anne and I just called Anne Garcia, let me throw a last name in there.

I got connected to Anne from another podcast host and we started working on the first podcast that I had together and the partnership flew. We have so much fun working together.

Her team is an essential part of Team Becca. I wouldn't even survive without them over and beyond podcast management and production. Her team helped me with my social media, my graphics, and my website design. I just couldn't be more grateful to you and your team for your services. I'm so excited to have you on the show.

First of all, I just want to say thank you, Becca, for not just having me on the show, but giving me this opportunity to represent the team Dklutr. At the same time, as you said, being your partner, being your support crew when it comes to your digital marketing needs for the past three years.

You're correct, it's been three years, so I feel like it hasn't been that long, but at the same time, I am amazed that we have a lot of fun, but it's been three years. You guys are also a team that has a lot of meaning and a lot of passion behind what you do, but I would love to hear the backstory of Dklutr.

How was it formed and how did you guys get to a point of wanting to create this business?

How Team Dklutr Was Born

Before having this agency, I was in corporate for about, I believe 10 years. I worked at one of the largest local banks here in the Philippines. I'm from the Philippines, by the way. My background has always been in communications and marketing, but being part of a corporation, there are always a lot of layers and hierarchies.

You get to do bits and pieces of things related to marketing, but not necessarily the whole shebang or the whole enchilada. In 2017, I retired, availed early retirement from my work, and tried virtual assistants for two years. 

So I was a lone VA. I and husband tried VA-ing and it was, I would say a successful run up until the pandemic when everything, of course, the entire world, stopped, but we found the most success during the pandemic because we were able to have a client who was doing a masterclass for launching a podcast, and we were hired to launch about 10 shows at that time. So it revved up, 

That's why I love podcasting because it has been our gateway to everything that we have experienced so far. That's the reason why we have scaled, it’s because of the success that we experienced in podcasting, which led us to wonderful clients such as yourself.

That's also how we were able to scale from just a three-person team to now a team of about, depending on a given time, 12 to 20.

That's incredible, and there's something in that story that I want to pull forward for the listeners because so many times, we are afraid just people in general, are afraid to take action in the pursuit of doing something different or in the pursuit of doing something more meaningful, or even something that we might enjoy more than what we're currently doing, because we can't see the end outcome.

We don't know exactly what it's going to look like and all the steps in between seem invisible as well. So that feels daunting and what I love about what you shared is that, I call it the beautiful unfolding, but you allowed the universe to work through you and Carl took one step at a time.

You started the VA and that led you to this thing, the masterclass, and led you to 10 podcasts. Now you have a full digital marketing company but you wouldn't have had that if you hadn't taken that first step. So there are two things that I want to say.

Know that there is a beautiful unfolding that can support you if you take that step. And then two, like sometimes you just need to just take action and get embraced by the beautiful unfolding as I'm saying, and gain confidence that you can do the thing.

I would love for you to share with the audience, maybe some of your learnings, or you can expand upon what I said, but what have you learned through doing all those different steps?

The Power of Teamwork

To add to what you were saying about the beautiful unfolding before I dive into the question.

That time was also scary, as you said, because when I jumped from corporate to being unemployed for maybe two to three months and then finally diving into virtual assistants or remote work. Remote work back then in 2017 wasn't as scary and glamorous as it is now in 2024, like seven years ago, it was completely different.

Tech wasn't as advanced, and the market was ripe, but at the same time, the learnings, you had to really learn everything from scratch. AI wasn't even around back then. One of the early jobs that I got was transcribing podcasts by manually listening, and typing because there wasn't AI transcription back then.

One of the things that I would say that is the biggest learning for me was when we did the whole jumping from corporate to working for ourselves to now having an agency of our own, there's four of us here in this agency that own this.

At the same time, we have people working with us full-time, we have freelancers, and we have part-timers. I lean heavily on the power of the team. When I say that, the community, the support, the collaboration, and the synergy. I know that synergy is always thrown as a buzzword, but in our agency, that is really something that happens, it's dynamic. 

I learn so much from each person regardless of where they are, or what their position is. The editor, the writer, the designer, people who just come up with content for us, for our clients. It's a synergetic experience and I know that in our generation now, or in the world now, people tend to gravitate towards being more individualistic.

But that's something that I hope makes a comeback at least for people to rely on the support of each other or rely on their team or their support system.

I love that you're saying that because I'm very team-spirited as well. And for the listeners, it's really hard to chase your dreams by yourself.

I know you want to protect them and at some point, when your dream is emerging, maybe that's something you keep private. But once you're in it, once you're in the unfolding, having a team to support you is not only crucial, but it's magical when you embrace the power of the team.

I don't think I would be at this point in my career if I didn't have your team, my team. I just really appreciate that you're sharing that because it is from the team, you get new ideas generated, there's a synergy, there's fun, and there's so much that comes from the team.

And as the saying goes, heavy is the head that wears the crown. As they always say I am the face of Dklutr, but as somebody who leads an agency, it can get very overwhelming at times, especially with all the algorithms, and the changes you have to keep up with the trends, right?

You keep up with both client demands and internal demands, which is for your team. But I always feel that overwhelm is equally distributed amongst ourselves. Like everybody carries their own load that's why it doesn't feel as overwhelming.

I love that you mentioned it too because tell you what, being a solopreneur like it's one thing and being an entrepreneur, which is also a solopreneur, but when you are truly on that solo path, the overwhelmed, you don't have anyone else to share it with.

You're doing all the roles, which if you look at it in the long term is nearly impossible to sustain. So anyway, it's just such a good message. I want to ask you another question about that. What is it like a current aha that's up for you right now?

Nobody is Self-Made

This might be a little bit controversial, but I will say it anyway because I have talked about this with circles and groups and I've gotten polarizing responses, but I've always believed that nobody's ever self-made.

You always stand on the shoulders of people who have come before you. You enjoy the path that other people have already walked on. Maybe that also ties into my belief about the power of the team, but in my case, because I am an only child, I am very reliant on community, like my cousins, I go on vacation, I sleep over at their houses, so that I'm not sad because I'm an only child.

I probably had that growing up in the sense and I know how hardworking my parents have been to help me get to where I am right now. I strongly believe that nobody's ever self-made. 

Yes, we can be self-reliant. Yes, we can be self-empowered, but we also need to recognize the people in our circle or there are people in our network, or there are people in our past, in our present, and probably in our future who will greatly contribute to our lives, our success, our experiences, the fullness of life.

That is awesome because I couldn't agree more, and again, some people listening to this are like, I'm totally self-made, but I do believe that behind every self-made person is an army of people.

It's nice to, from this perspective, be able to share with the listeners that, if you do have those super big dreamy goals and you're going for it, surround yourself with the team, because at the end of the day, it's going to be hard to achieve everything by yourself.

Don't get me wrong, we should always recognize our achievements, we should be the first people to pat ourselves on the back and say, hey, you've made it, you've come this far, you've achieved so much. But at the same time, having probably had that awareness or that recognition, you made it this far, but you didn't do it all by yourself.

There's this other element to it too, especially with you running an agency and like me, in the speaking, training, and writing space, I need help. There's just no way I could do it all on my own, but there's this element to it too, that when you're building something, each person has a different level of strengths, gifts, and talents.

And it's like as amazing as Anne might be and how amazing Becca might be, I have deficiencies like there are just things that maybe I can do, but I shouldn't be doing, but that was something during my journey that I learned is that there's a lot of things I can do that maybe I'm even decent at or good at, but A, there is someone that can do it better, and B, if I do that too much, it takes me out of the thing that I love the most. 

So I don't know if you relate to that or if you want to talk about it, but I think that's an interesting topic to chat about too.

Letting Go of the Reins

You are pitching to the choir because somebody who remembers, I started as a lone VA. So I'm very used to doing everything myself and I have to confess, I'm someone who has a high need for control. Like this has to be done this way, this has to be done this way, but another aha moment for me, and I love this discovery.

It's not groundbreaking, but for me, it is, because of who I am as a person, that you're correct. Somebody will be able to do it better, faster, more amazing than you and it will cost half the time and half the effort than you doing it yourself. I am grateful that I'm surrounded by people who are more talented than me, and who are doing things for our clients.

I'm very glad that they are satisfied with it, but at the beginning, it was a struggle to let go of the reins. Letting go is so painful. But once you see the output, because I'm result-oriented, so when they see that something is well done and well made, I get that satisfaction that, ah, this person can take the wheel.

If you guys want to see any of their work, you can go to my website, BeccaPowers. com. But Lynae, my business partner, which a lot of the audience knows, like we used to do the website and it was okay, it was cute, we did our best. And then we finally helped let go of the control and handed it to Anne and her team, and it's just night and day.

 I was like, I probably should have given that over a long time ago. And shout out to the team, they enjoyed working on this website.

Let's pivot to another question. So why are you passionate about the work that you do?

Building Personal Brands and Decluttering Workflows

I would say I've always had a penchant for words in the sense that my mom said, I distinctly remember my mom said, when I was five years old, I wrote like a news article report on the piece of paper and I was like practicing it and I think she still kept that piece of paper. So I was acting like I was a journalist or I was like a TV news reporter or something. So I've always had a love for journalism, and communication, and that eventually evolved into advertising and marketing because that is what I did in college, I was a major in advertising.

I love just matching tone and intention, and communicating that to a brand, making it a personality. So I'm very grateful that digital marketing can be stressful as an industry, but at the same time, where it has gone to now, it has democratized how people are able to build themselves.

10 years ago, nobody had the power to create their personal brand. Now, you want a brand, you want to sell yourself, you want to build a name for yourself, and you can do that in a week or two weeks. That's what I'm very passionate about matching, the power of marketing, the power of branding with people, and helping them have that platform to stand on so that their voice can be heard, they can find their network, and they can find their people, because when that marriage happens, for me at least, it's one of the most satisfying things. 

When you see a post and people interact with that post. We check the podcast downloads, and the analytics, and when you see that people are interacting, people are engaging, it's very satisfying for me.

You always love celebrating our download, our next level of downloads, and stuff like that too. So I could say, being a partner with you, that you get very excited when we hit milestones.

And one of the things that I'm passionate about too is just, I'm a sucker for organization. That's why, Rhon makes fun of me that I'm very type A. I have a Monica in me, as a person. Although millennials, the reference, and Dklutr. The name Dklutr actually started out, I don't know if I told you, but Carl and I used to have an organization in interior design makeover side hustle before, where we help people declutter their homes or their rooms so that their space makes more sense for them. So Dklutrr came from that. 

When we built this agency, that was the first thing that also came to my mind. I want to help businesses declutter their workflow, fix and streamline their processes, and their services so that they can focus on the things they love.

In your case, you don't need to edit your podcast, you don't need to write your show notes, but what you do is what you're doing now. The magic of communicating and engaging in, connecting, and networking. That's the other passion that I have is just fixing things, keeping things in order, putting things where they are.

I love that because it really is, you are decluttering people's workflows. The more of these types of tasks that I keep, it declutters up my workflow for sure, because I have to do the things that I have to do, not have to do, but want to do.

My priorities are making sure I'm hosting my podcast that I'm keynoting in front of audiences that I'm training with corporate clients, like when I'm not doing those things and I'm in my back office not doing the thing that lights me up. So I appreciate your passion and commitment to decluttering my workflow.

I just want to allude to something you said earlier about finding people who do it better than you. The reason why that's important is you, yourself, like you, Becca Powers, do the things that only you can do and we can't do what you do. So you need to do what you're good at because you're the only person who can do that.

I can't speak to 1,000 people like you, that's not my wheelhouse, at least not yet. but you do it effortlessly. You’re on your third book already. I don't even have one book by my name. But you shine your best because you're doing the thing that you're best at, in your zone of genius.

I want to ask another question, especially since we're coming down to the bottom of the half hour. I can't believe it's been almost a half hour. I want to ask you a question that's directed towards the listeners.

What is an empowering message that you might have for them if they're looking to maybe break free and do their own thing or basically anything that would recap our conversation, what's an empowering message that you can share with the audience?

The Power of Trust in Building a Successful Team

They say that in this world, there are two types of people, those who believe that trust should be earned, and people who believe that trust is lost. I do categorize myself as in that second group of people wherein, trust is lost. And why do I say that as an empowering message? I believe in trusting people.

I believe that we can all, as peachy as it sounds, I believe that if you can trust someone, they will be there for you. They will be able to have your back, and I keep alluding to the power of team and community because of my background and my experience and where I've had the most success and experienced the most happiness.

It's always with having somebody or having supported or having a friend or having a team and I would say, I used to come from corporate and that is, you're part of a large thousands of people workforce, but you can feel the most alone in a sea of people. Whereas when I changed my profession and worked for myself, that is actually when I felt most supported and trusted. 

It's also because I was able to put that trust in other people. Nowadays I see a high level of individualism, especially in the younger generation, and even with our younger team members, I always say that friendship is important, trusting people is important, collaboration is important and partnerships are important.

It's okay to be self-empowered, but it also feels better when there's that higher level of security and support.

We're meant to be connected, belonging is one of the five primary human needs, but yet we are becoming, I guess fragments of society are becoming very Indo-individualized, and while that has its empowering moments too, it's definitely aiding this connection with other people.