Meet Indira D’Cano

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Indira D’Cano. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Indira, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
I know that resilience is one of my primary skills and qualities, but it was not always that way. I had to learn that. I had learned Endurance, meaning I knew there was no way out or going back. It was a slow and long process of acceptance, adjustments, and reinventing myself.

And it’s not fair to say my resilience comes from one aspect but a collection of life experiences. To develop this skill, I first needed to find answers to whys, hows, and whats about different situations in my personal and professional life.

When I came to the USA in 2013, I had just been married for six months; although my husband is a native of this country, it didn’t mean it was all easy. In a way, it wasn’t the regular immigrant story; it was still my story about finding myself, my purpose, my strengths, and my goals.
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First, I had to go through the process of leaving my previous life behind, with the precedent of graduating with a bachelor’s in Accounting and Finance in 2011; now, it didn’t mean anything. Adding to this, I isolated myself in various aspects of life due to my inefficient English dominance. Though I didn’t want to play the victim or poor me, I knew my life had made an unexpected turn. And I said this because coming to start a new life here was not the first thing we wanted to do. There were different plans and a different lifestyle, and it was all gone.
This was the narrative I needed to change, meaning that instead of focusing on what I didn’t have anymore, I started looking at the whole panorama. I began appreciating the new nuances, experiences, friends, and opportunities.

I had to find the whys, hows, and whats. And that’s how my search began. So, my item number one on my new Resilience to Reinvent Myself TO DO list was….

1—what I needed to do: learn the language, learn to drive, learn how to respond to passive-aggressive comments, learn to enforce boundaries, learn to say No, learn to manage excessive stress, learn self-care and self-awareness, and learn new traits and skills.

2—How will I obtain it? Through research, free or paid. I networked and surrounded myself with good influences, productive, positive friends, and acquaintances. I put what I was learning into practice and made myself take measurable risks, trying new things and experiences.

3—Why: Asking myself why I wanted to learn all these new things and step out of my comfort zone revealed a deep situation I was unaware of. Before coming to the USA, I was so used to being protected and receiving help from my inner circle. I also used to believe that other people had the answers to my big and deepER questions. I had a poor me mentality and felt stock. These were and are the reasons Why.

Again, I wanted to change that narrative and take charge of my emotions, decisions, knowledge, and how I dealt with failures and achievements with my resilience.

So, finding my whats, hows, and whys was crucial to learning and becoming resilient. The results:
I discovered that I’m responsible for having my own back, that I’m my best advocate, that I have a voice, and that even people will keep saying no or failing me; it did not define my present or shape my future.

Last but not least, one significant change of circumstance I recently went through was becoming a new mom. I feel a profound respect and admiration for parents out there, and I always have. However, it was not my goal or desire for myself.

When I found out I was going to be a mommy, I had to gear myself up to remind myself I would need the skills and traits I had learned in the past to become resilient in this new event.

Consequently, I had to put my professional life on hold again. Honestly, even though it was not easy to do, it was one hundred percent worth every minute, day, month, and almost three years I spent preparing my nest and learning to be a new mom.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
After several years of reinventing myself through building resilience, I finally gained the courage to try something new, something mine, from scratch, something I was passionate about. It made me leave my comfort zone. Then, I created two brands. The first one helped me to achieve goal #1: getting out of my comfort zone, and I came up with the idea of hosting a Podcast in Spanish called Aprende, Ajusta y Crece con Indira. Here, I shared tips and tools that helped me overcome self-imposed obstacles and how I use productivity methods that improved my life and workflow.—and soon opened the door to provide my expertise from my experience as a Bachelor in Accounting and Finance in the past years while going through college. The name of this brand translates Learn, Be Flexible, and Grow, which describes the phases I went through to become resilient.

Two of my creations are already posted on my website, www.aprende.ajustaycrece; there are two ebooks. One is a workbook fusing some of my favorite marketing and productivity tools. This E-book, “Lleva tu Visión a la Acción,” intends to help start-ups and small-owner businesses gather and organize their goals and vision, set an action plan, and execute it in 90 days.
My other e-book, “Contabilidad para no Contadores,” is a manual that helps business owners understand the value and numbers in their financial statements.
I gather information from other SBOs, and I find that they need help making educated decisions based on what these numbers communicate.
For the last couple of months, I’ve been working on a new section that will provide more education about finances, business plans, and systems for their operations.

The second brand is Peerless Asissist, which provides virtual assistance to Real estate agents and home improvement. This idea came from an experience working with a friend of mine several years ago and during the pandemic. It was here, in this period, due to the need to become more savvy and valuable to the needs of his business, that I took a couple of courses: Social Media Manager and All About Virtual Assistance Services.
My vision with this brand for the near future is to provide a platform for OBMs and Virtual Assistant freelancers to have a place that looks over their interests and frees them as much as possible from scams and impossible clients.
For now, I am the CEO, Marketing Director, Social media manager, and customer support department.
Some of my creations for PeerlessAssist are editable templates and guides for Real Estate agents. I’m currently working on a new Blog section and an E-book for the home improvement industry that I plan to launch early in the summer of 2024.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Since 2020, I’ve aimed to keep updating my knowledge, innovating, and setting the bar higher. I recently applied for a Women Leaders Executive MBA scholarship. I’m very proud and happy to share that I was accepted. I can not describe how much this acceptance means to me and how this new phase makes all the previous ones valuable and worth it.

I’d like to point out that while taking these courses and being a part-time virtual assistant before my baby, I worked for my husband’s company doing a physically demanding job. I’m not looking for a pat on my shoulder. Still, I feel this part of my story and process is worth mentioning because, thanks to this job, I learned more about how to deal with real-world challenges, self discipline when some days were harder to deliver, and made me appreciate even more my goals and beliefs, which made me more resilient and determined because I wanted a different outcome for me. Not because physical jobs are something to be ashamed of, but because it’s okay to want something different than what your loved ones think is ‘’best’’ for you. It was not about doing ‘’something better’’ or a job that ‘’fits me’’, it was, and it is about doing something for me, something I’m passionate about, it’s about taking charge of my own narrative, while accepting, living and learning from the circumstances that are happening at the moment.

Thankfully, in the present, my beautiful gift and angel is at a stage where I can pick up where I left off, now with new experiences, new skills, and more resilience.

While I’ve been out of the scene, I’ve been working sort of speaking behind the scenes and acquiring new skills to excel in my work performance, like:
Marketing Director
Video workflow and camera presence
Updating my Social media management portfolio
Transaction Coordinator projects
Marketing for Real Estate Strategies
Project Management
Tax preparation and bookkeeping have been added to my resume.

I took advantage of every nursing time to take these courses because I was determined not to let my new circumstances pull me back from all the progress I had made through the years.
While caring and loving for my baby brought immense happiness and some challenges, it was another opportunity to push myself forward to the end of the tunnel from postpartum depression.

In the end, if I had to answer in a short statement about where my resilience comes from?
I’d say it comes from the deeper need to search for an answer, the need to reinvent myself over and over, the vast hunger to keep discovering new experiences, new things, and new skills, and the need to rewrite my narrative. While I’m still alive, I’m determined not to give up and keep hoping for the best.
My new goal and mission is to teach my baby this skill so that as he ages, he can endure and be proactive with the new circumstances THAT LIFE WILL PUT- in front of him.

If I could put it In three words, I would say:
Determination
Hope
Searching your What, How, and Why

If I can share a piece of inspiration with somebody else going through a big change of events in their life, it’ll be this quote:

“Visualize the future you want and develop the skills that will help you reach it. Leave the past behind, accept, and learn from the new experiences that come your way.”- Indira D Cano

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

Honestly,I have 3 books in mind that I read simultaneously:
1- High-Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard: blocking time and self-care
2—Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman: Mindset, curiosity, asking questions, and avoiding taking negative comments personally.
3- Miracle Morning by Hal Erol: Visualizing our day, month, and years to come has a powerful impact in the outcome of our mindset, motivation, and planning.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
The personal picture from my personal brand photoshoot credits to Sabrina Medina IG: https://www.instagram.com/sabrinanicole.photography?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==

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