Margarita Pica, NZ business coach, started working in corporate communications, PR, and marketing for a Fortune 500 company about eight years ago. At first she enjoyed it, but with the recession of the last several years, she began to question the whole idea of working for corporations.  She didn’t yet know her “Big Why”.

She survived four rounds of layoffs but saw what those layoffs did to her team members and friends. She decided she wanted to do something to have more control over her career and her life. She decided she wanted to do something where the responsibility was all hers, from the decisions to the budget to the strategies.

When her father passed away the summer of 2011, she realized that she had to take action. She came to see that her true passion was helping other people figure out their purposes, so she decided to become a life and career transformation coach for women. At about the same time as she was marketing her own business, she realized the place she could make a huge impact was in marketing small businesses. One of her greatest skills was in marketing. Fellow business owners in New Zealand began to approach her for marketing, coaching, sales advice, and business coaching. She began to teach them how to build thriving businesses based on their deepest passions so that they too could make a meaningful impact on the world while providing themselves with money, freedom, and time.

Now Margarita has two business tracks– life and career coaching for women in business, and NZ business coaching for entrepreneurs.

Margarita has the perfect mindset for business and marketing coaching for entrepreneurs since she believes that in spite of a bad economy, most people can become successful entrepreneurs, given the right strategies and the right tools and resources. She believes that, while entrepreneurs usually have an area of expertise, they haven’t studied the principles of marketing or small business success to the extent that they need to.

Margarita tells her coaching students that the most important secret to having a successful business is to figure out why you’re doing it in the first place. What do you want your life to look like? What are your larger goals and how will your business support you in achieving them? She believes, and as entrepreneurs you can probably agree with her, that the answers to these questions give entrepreneurs the driving motivation to keep them focused and to direct their strategies. She believes that in the tough times your answers to these questions will make all the difference. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Do you want to be the master of your own destiny?
• Do you want to be able to express your deepest passions and talents and make a living doing so?
• Do you want to have a more flexible schedule so you can spend more time with your family?
• Do you want to make a difference in the world and be of service to others?

Margarita mentors women entrepreneurs to help them build thriving businesses, to make an impact on the world, and to create the lifestyle they’re looking for. That’s her own personal big vision” why.”

On a personal level her “Big Why” is to have more freedom and flexibility for her family and have more control over her income.

Her advice as a NZ business coach to new entrepreneurs in the moments when fear started to creep in and you wonder what you got yourself into is encapsulated in saying that motivates her in stressful times:

“Entrepreneurs live for one or two years but most people won’t, so they can spend the rest of their lives living like most people can’t.”

Her hope is that while the early years may take major labour, it will pay off with personal fulfilment, abundance, money, time, and freedom.