We recently connected with Yolanda Martinez and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Yolanda, thanks for joining us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

Founder Story: Yolanda Martinez — Crossing Borders to Confidence
I didn’t set out to become a coach.
I set out to survive — and then to rise.
My story begins long before “21 Days with Yolanda” existed — before the workbooks, the women’s circles, the speaking engagements. It begins with Crossing Borders — literally and emotionally. As a young girl, I crossed countries, cultures, and realities that forced me to grow up before I had the chance to dream.
By nineteen, I reached a defining moment.
My brothers were becoming involved in drugs, and the environment around me was closing in. I could feel the future that was waiting if I stayed — and it was not the life I saw for myself.
I wanted to be a teacher.
I wanted to inspire.
I wanted to build a life rooted in purpose, not survival.
So I made one of the hardest decisions of my life:
I left home and family to save my future.
I crossed borders again — this time not just to another place, but into another identity. I chose myself, even when it meant walking into the unknown alone.
That was the first moment I truly understood my own voice, my own power, and the importance of choosing the life you are meant for — even when it breaks your heart to walk away.
From Survival to Purpose
For years, I believed I was just “getting through” life. But eventually, I began to recognize something profound:
The strength I had fought for was the same strength women everywhere were searching for.
Women who were shrinking themselves.
Women who had forgotten their dreams.
Women who were surviving — but not living.
I recognized them, because I had been them.
So I asked myself:
What did I need when I was breaking, when I was rebuilding, when I was becoming?
What I found became the foundation of my work:
Self-love that doesn’t require permission
Self-worth that doesn’t dissolve under pressure
Confidence rebuilt in daily, powerful, simple steps
I began studying empowerment psychology, confidence building, identity reset work, and emotional healing — not as theory, but as a lived practice.
I wasn’t building a business.
I was building a pathway home to oneself.
The Birth of 21 Days With Yolanda
One day, while touring with my husband and Robert Kiyosaki, I met two sisters from London — digital creators Chrissa and Vicky Tolidou. In a quiet moment of conversation, I shared my desire to help women rebuild their identity and confidence from the inside out.
Together, at a small table, we sketched what would become the heart of my movement:
Not a long, overwhelming coaching program.
Not something that required perfection.
But 21 days — a commitment a woman could actually make to herself.
I created daily micro-actions, reflection prompts, identity rebuilding rituals, and emotional reset practices. I shared early worksheets with women I knew — and tested everything through real lives, real emotions, real healing.
And something beautiful happened:
Women didn’t just feel better — they remembered themselves.
Launching the Movement
As my coaching business took shape, I knew my first step wouldn’t be a grand online launch or a highly produced campaign.
It would be a Women’s Luncheon — a space where women could gather, listen, breathe, and reconnect with the part of themselves they had lost.
No perfect branding.
No strategic rollout.
No performance.
Just truth, compassion, and sisterhood.
I speak to women with honesty, vulnerability, and fire.
I let them see all of me — not just the polished parts.
And they come.
Not because everything is perfect.
But because the transformation is real.
The Mission Today
Today, 21 Days with Yolanda is more than a program.
It is a global movement of women remembering who they are.
I help women:
Reclaim their voice
Rebuild their confidence
Restore their relationship with themselves
Step into the life they were meant to lead — not the life they settled for
I didn’t just cross borders in geography.
I crossed borders in identity, worth, courage, and destiny.
And now, I walk back across that bridge every single day to guide other women home to themselves.
Because when a woman remembers who she is —
the world changes.

Yolanda, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Founder Introduction: Yolanda Martinez — “Crossing Borders to Confidence”
I was born in Michoacán, Mexico, and my earliest memories are of movement — crossing borders, crossing identities, and crossing expectations others tried to place on me. When I was six, my mother risked everything to bring my sisters and me to the United States. She was pregnant at the time, and the journey required courage most people will never have to summon. Part of our crossing involved placing my baby sister in the care of strangers — trusting that she would be delivered safely to the other side.
That was my introduction to survival, sacrifice, and strength.
We settled in Olympia, Washington, where I grew up working in the strawberry, cucumber, and raspberry fields from dawn to dusk every summer. As children, we didn’t play — we worked. My father struggled with alcohol and violence, and home was often a place of fear. By the time I was nineteen, life presented me with another defining crossroads. My older brother — involved in drug trafficking — began pressuring our family into that world. I knew I did not come to this country, or survive everything I had survived, to become part of that.
I had dreams.
I wanted to teach.
I wanted to inspire.
I wanted to build my life, not just survive it.
So at nineteen, I made another border crossing — I left my home, my mother, and my siblings to save my future. It broke my heart, but it also awakened my voice.
From that moment forward, I built myself — degree by degree, job by job, step by step — as a teacher, model, speaker, and a woman who refused to be defined by where she came from, only by where she knew she was going.
But the real breakthrough came when I realized something:
The same strength I fought so hard to build within myself is the strength women everywhere are searching for.
Women who:
Give everything to others but nothing to themselves
Lose their identity while surviving life
Know they are meant for more, but don’t know how to begin again
I recognized them because I was them.
And that is how my movement was born.
What I Do Today not only changes lives but also impacts women who have felt silenced.
I am the Founder of 21 Days With Yolanda, a transformational women’s coaching program designed to help women:
Reclaim their voice
Rebuild their confidence
Restore their relationship with themselves
Remember who they were before life demanded they become someone else
My program uses:
Daily identity-shifting micro-actions
Self-worth and confidence rebuilding practices
Emotional healing and self-trust restoration
Community support and guided reflection
I help women not just change their mindset —
I help them change the way they see themselves.
What Makes My Work Different
I don’t teach from theory.
I teach from lived experience.
I’ve crossed borders most people never face:
Cultural
Emotional
Familial
Identity
Survival
Reinvention
I know what it means to start over.
I know what it means to walk away to save yourself.
I know what it means to rise again and again and again.
Women work with me because I hold space with compassion, truth, and fire. I don’t fix women — I help them remember they were never broken.
What I’m Most Proud Of
I am most proud of breaking cycles.
I am most proud of building myself when no one was coming to save me.
I am most proud that I now help women rise into the strongest, clearest, most powerful versions of themselves.
Because when one woman rises, she lifts generations.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

A Story of Resilience
One moment that shaped my resilience happened when I was nineteen.
At that time, my family and I were living in Northern California. My older half-brother had convinced my mother to store his drug supply in our apartment. I was working two jobs, supporting my mother and three younger siblings, going to school, and still trying to hold onto my dreams of becoming a teacher and continuing my modeling career.
One afternoon, while organizing paperwork, I opened the file cabinet and discovered stacks of drugs hidden inside. In that moment, everything inside me froze. I knew exactly what that meant:
My family was being pulled into the same world I had fought so hard to avoid. My future was suddenly at risk.
Every dream I had worked for could be destroyed in a single decision. And I also knew this: If I stayed, I would lose myself.
So at nineteen — with no safety net, no emotional support, and no clear plan — I made the hardest choice of my life.
I sat my mother down and told her: “I love you, but I cannot stay here. I do not want this life. I will not be part of this.”
She did not ask me to stay. She did not tell me she understood. She chose my brother’s world over mine, but because of the lack of love for me, she was living in fear and survival.
And so I left — heartbroken, shattered, and alone — but still choosing myself.
I moved to Los Angeles, got a job as a teacher’s assistant, worked at a deli, attended college, and pursued my modeling career. I rebuilt my life from the ground up — not because I wasn’t afraid, but because I refused to let my story end in survival when I knew I was meant for more.
That moment — choosing my future over my fear — became the foundation of my work today.
Because I know what it takes to walk away from everything you’ve ever known to protect who you are becoming.
And now, I guide women to do the same: To choose themselves. To trust their inner voice. To rebuild — not from pain, but from purpose.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

A Time I Had to Pivot
One of the biggest pivots in my life happened at the exact moment I thought everything was finally coming together.
I was twenty-nine, married, working as a teacher’s assistant, attending college, modeling on the side, and finally beginning to feel like I had built stability after years of survival. For the first time, I believed I was stepping into the life I had always dreamed of. And then my mother got sick. She was diagnosed with Hepatitis C, and within months, she passed away. Her death shattered me. My marriage began to dissolve. The foundation I had worked so hard to build suddenly felt unstable. In that season, I had a choice: I could fall apart and stay there. Or I could pivot — not by pretending I was okay, but by rebuilding myself again, piece by piece. So I made a new decision. I shifted all of my energy inward. I poured myself into healing, growth, and rediscovering who I was without survival as my identity.
I traveled. I moved. I rebuilt my life from the inside out. And eventually, I met my husband, Mark.
Someone who saw my strength not as something to compete with, but something to support, honor, and celebrate.
That pivot taught me something I now teach women: When your world breaks, it does not mean your story is ending — it means it is transforming. The path forward wasn’t linear.
It wasn’t clean or easy. But it is the pivot that led me to my purpose. Because in losing my mother, I also discovered the core of my calling: To help women return to themselves. To help them rebuild identity from the inside.
To remind them that they are allowed to rise again — and again — and again.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.21dayswitthyolanda.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamyolandamartinez/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yshoegal
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yolanda-martinez-24606913/
• Twitter: https://x.com/yshoegal

Image Credits

Adam Sternberg – Photographer