EP # 197 - The Success Triangle. 3 Critical Areas Every Business Owner Must Master

In this value-packed episode, Maggie Perotin breaks down the three essential areas of self-development that every entrepreneur needs to focus on to achieve sustainable business growth. 

Discover why your business can't outgrow you and how developing these critical areas leads to faster, more sustainable success.

What You'll Learn:

1. Personal Development as a Human Entrepreneur
   • Mindset foundations: embracing failure, making fast decisions, and maintaining focus
   • Physical wellbeing: nutrition, movement, and rest for sustained energy
   • Spiritual growth: building faith and self-belief in entrepreneurship
   
   
2. Business Leadership Skills
   • Essential CEO capabilities
   • How to identify and fill skill gaps
   • The importance of leading by example
   • Why confidence matters in hiring and team building
   
   
3. Industry-Specific Expertise
   • Staying innovative in your field
   • Continuous learning strategies
   • Creating more value for clients through expertise

Key Insights:
✦ The three crucial mindset shifts that accelerate business growth
✦ How personal development directly impacts business success
✦ Why mastering business skills is essential for scaling
✦ The connection between self-development and effective leadership

💡 Episode Quote:
"Your business cannot outgrow you. Our skills allow us to be more effective, not only in decision-making and having a better perspective, but also in doing things faster."

Resources Mentioned:
• DREAM-PLAN-DO journal
• Personal development books (reach out to Maggie for recommendations)

Ready to accelerate your business growth through personal development? Visit https://Stairwaytoleadership.com to book a free consultation with Maggie.

Transcript

Maggie Perotin: [00:00:00] Hello. Welcome to Diamond Effect Podcast, episode 197. Today I want to talk about self-development and growing yourself as a leader of your business. Three areas that I think. Every business owners, every serious entrepreneur need to grow themselves in and why it is important, and it's coming from the fact that I am a self-development geek.

I truly believe that any growth in your business always starts with you. Your business cannot outgrow you. Our skills allow us to be more effective, not only in decision making and having better perspective, but also doing things faster, losing less energy, trying to get to where we're going.

So when I coach my clients, and when I grow myself, I grow in three [00:01:00] areas.. 

 Here are the three areas that I think every business owner should invest in their own growth. The first one is you as a human entrepreneur, a leader, and within that self-development growth, you have your mindset, your body, and your spirit. So as a holistic human. 

The second area is a business leader, a CEO. It takes a business person to grow a business. And therefore business skills are real skills that we need to develop in order to keep scaling. 

The third area is you as a service provider in your respective industry, you wanna know the latest methods, technologies, tools in your respective service industry so you can keep staying on top of the game. Keep [00:02:00] innovating for your clients and delivering them a lot of value.

Today I wanna mostly expand on the first area you growing yourself as an individual. And talk a little bit about the second area- business skills.

And then in the third area, I will tell you how I grow myself as a coach to be a better and a better coach for my clients so they can get better and better and faster results.

So starting with your entrepreneurial mindset or your mindset as a leader, this is key. Everything starts here. Now. This topic is huge. There's been so many books that have been written about it. And I definitely can't cover it all in the 20 minute podcast episode, but I want to talk about what I think are three most important mindset focuses and shifts in order for you to be very effective in your life and in your business. 

[00:03:00] Something that I've learned as I became an entrepreneur, but also even in my corporate career as I grew and, progressed in it.

The first key mindset is embracing failure and understanding that failure is key to success. And I'm speaking from experience when I was raised as this good student girl who was supposed to be perfect all the time. Who wasn't supposed to get bad grades at school and failure wasn't an option. And then even in my corporate career where we had contracts with our clients that were pretty much a hundred percent delivery or close to it, where we were held to such a high standard that most people were actually scared to innovate, to try new things because that embraced potential failure. And failure meant financial penalties. 

In entrepreneurship, every successful business, every [00:04:00] successful entrepreneur, their journey is loaded with failure because what failure is really learning. It allows you, as you are experimenting as you're trying things, as you are looking for what's the better solution for my clients, for my business, and so on.

You have those challenges along the way and those failures along the way, but they allow you to learn. Without it, there is no success. And the sooner you embrace it, the sooner you understand it. The easier it gets to go through it, and the faster you can move forward. The faster you can progress.

What it also does is build your resilience. So any obstacle, any challenge when you get up, process it. Learn from it. Dust the mud off and keep going. That's how you build resilience. [00:05:00] That's how you build that commitment. And it's almost like a universe is testing us in our commitment to create impact. In our commitment to our mission as entrepreneurs throwing those challenges along the way. And when you prove and show that you are committed, when you don't give up, when you look for new and better ways, that's where success awais you.  

The second key mindset in entrepreneurship is making fast decisions. And by fast I don't mean rushed, but not spending months and or weeks to trying to decide something to prepare for something. Decisions lead to actions and action leads to progress. The most successful business owners are just moving fast. If they have an idea and they wanna test it, they get to it right away.

Yes, they consider the idea from many different [00:06:00] angles, but they don't get stuck in analysis paralysis. They don't let the fear of potential risks stop them. They, if they believe that decision is worth making, they will analyze risk, prepare for them, but then implement this decision when there is more pros to it than potential disadvantages.

What I sometimes see in business owners is this inability to make fast decisions through spending weeks or months, debating very slight changes in whatever they're working on; that are irrelevant to the goals that they have or the progress that they could have done if they made decision faster.

The simplest example is, logos or designs. Sometimes it takes people months to decide on the shade of green they wanna pick or [00:07:00] the slightly different fonts or whatever that is. Those decisions should be made relatively quickly. Again, they don't have to be rushed within seconds. But they shouldn't also take weeks. 

There is a happy medium or you can make a fast decision, put it out there in the market, test it, and if it turns out not to be ideal, then tweak it. The decisions we make are never set in stone. We can always tweak them and change them. The action is what creates progress.

And the most successful entrepreneurs take a lot of actions. Move forward fast, because that's how they learn. What is the exact strategy to win, not by overanalyzing things and trying to decide or make the right decision ahead of time. The only way we know which decision was right is by actually implementing it [00:08:00] and creating results with it.

And the third part to the key mindset of successful entrepreneurs is focus and self discipline. So now once you're making decisions, you need to have a self-discipline to implement them. Meaning if I decided I will do something, I follow through with it. That is the first thing that your brain uses to build your self trust and to build your self-confidence.

If you are making decisions that then you don't follow through slowly, unintentionally and subconsciously, you are building an identity of somebody who never achieves their goals because they don't follow through with their decisions. Or identity of somebody who, okay, I decide, but I don't do it. Therefore, I don't get the results. I'm not successful.

The most successful [00:09:00] people have an identity of a person, is- if I decide I honor my own word, because my word is very important to me. I follow through with it. And then it also shows on the outside if they're making commitments to other people, their word is like gold. They always follow through. 

We all have unexpected circumstances. But when you're in charge of your schedule, when you're in charge of your focus, those unexpected circumstances are very rare. So majority of time you follow through with your commitment. 

That focus and that mindset of honoring your decisions, being in charge of your schedule is what makes entrepreneurs effective. Because they're very effective with the time that they have. They're moving forward quickly through the decisions that they make, following through what those decisions, [00:10:00] implementing them. Learning from failures, not letting that emotional, disappointment that naturally happens with failures drag too long. They come up strong and they keep going.

Now, in order to be able to do that, you also need to have a strong body that support that, if you think about it, you are using a lot of energy every day by. Dealing with challenges, making decisions, implementing them, and so on. It's hard to do when, let's say your body isn't healthy or your body doesn't have a proper fuel.

The way I think about it and how I take care of myself, there's three key things. There is what I eat. My nutrition- eating healthy food that gives me proper energy throughout the day. There is movement. Staying fit, so your body's strong, and with that, having some fresh air, so your mind is oxygenated. And the third [00:11:00] part is rest. Not only rest occasionally on vacation, but also getting proper amount of sleep every day, getting proper breaks throughout the day. So you maintain the high levels of energy to be able to make many decisions, to be able to, go through challenges and not get put down because of them.

The third component of the self-development is be spiritual component. It takes a lot of faith and self-belief in entrepreneurship to succeed. 

When you're implementing those decisions, yeah, you don't have a hundred percent guarantee that they will work out. Or you don't know which ones will work out or which one don't.

You're implementing them while trusting and believing that they will work out this way. And of course, while monitoring the progress and making adjustments. But [00:12:00] without that hope and faith, it's very easy to lose motivation. Whether you believe in God, whether you're more spiritual, and think about the universe and higher power, whatever speaks to you, you wanna tap into that. You want to develop your spiritual side because it also gives you strength in going out there and making the impact you want to make through your business. 

In terms of my mindset, I use a lot of coaching tools that, of course, I teach my clients to use. When I coach my clients, a key part to that is journaling. There is different methods of journaling. I use different methods for different things. So part of my DREAM-PLAN-DO journal is building up my gratefulness practice and staying at the positive emotional level by practicing gratitude. [00:13:00] Or building up my self-confidence and showing myself that when I take action, there is progress that I create. And a lot of it is positive, even though my brain wants to focus on the one thing that didn't work that day, even though there were, for example 10 that did.

I have some prompts in this journal, that I also give my clients, that allow me to do that. Definitely for my mindset, a key part of me maintaining or growing it is journaling. 

There are great books. I'm a self-development geek. I've read a lot of books and self-development, and I keep reading and discovering new ones, but also going back to some classics that I really value. If you ever want a book recommendation, reach out to me. I'm always happy to suggest some books. 

There is also a lot of materials online, whether it's podcasts like this one or a lot of others, whether there is videos, guided meditations. 

[00:14:00] All of those are tools to not only maintain my mindset at high performing levels, but also keep growing and expanding my capacity and emotional capacity. 

In terms of body I've mentioned healthy nutrition. I'm not a proponent of one diet or one way of eating over the other. Whatever works for you. 

You just wanna make sure that it's healthy, unprocessed. You provide to your body the vitamins, nutrients, minerals, through, holistic foods. And sleep and rest and movement. Very critical. I'm not a doctor to give you medical advice. 

But if you ask any doctor, any trainer, any healthcare professional, those are the staples. If you have those, adjusted to your needs, your body will be strong and it will help you grow your business. 

And then for me, in terms of [00:15:00] spiritual growth; there is definitely books, podcasts, or, coaches that I use for my mindset, but also for my spiritual journey, and my faith.

Now let's move on to the second part of you growing yourself. And this part is you growing your business skills. Business skills are real skills. It's like becoming a basketball player and saying that basketball dribbling or shooting to the hoop, or defense, or offense or not skills.

There are skills that every PRO basketball player masters and practices every day over and over. And it's the same in business. The way I teach my clients what to focus on because there are so many, is this, understand where you are and see where you wanna go. And when you [00:16:00] look at that, the journey in between, you will have some skill gaps that you'll need to fill in order to get there. So for example. If you're at the level when you're scaling and now the next step for you is building a team, and yet you've never led people before, you've never hired people, you don't even know where to start.

Those are the skills you want to start developing, like hiring, training, motivating people, building teams. In the beginning, if you've never had a business background and you're starting a business, you're starting to sign clients. A lot of it will be marketing and sales. Understanding the psychology of selling. Understanding marketing principles.

It might be even soft skills like communication. How do I effectively communicate to my ideal clients? Understand how I help them. Or time management, right? We talked about being focused. [00:17:00] Time management. And building up habits that will make your day to day easier and will allow you to be in charge of your schedule.

For example, for me, when I started my business, I quickly realized that the first couple of skill sets I had to develop and master was social media marketing. I've never done that before. Even though I've done some marketing, but it was very, traditional. So when I realized social media is very powerful and this is how I wanted to market my business, those were the skills I had to develop.

Networking was another skill. I realized I wanted to build some powerful relationships, but I've never networked in Canada or amongst entrepreneurs. I didn't know how online networking looked like versus in person. So those were the skills I had to grow. 

Then, for example, another one was selling intangible services. Up to that point, all my selling experience was with physical [00:18:00] product or services that the companies they worked for were done. 

Whereas when you go into coaching you're selling something very intangible . I'm guiding my clients, I'm giving them perspective, I'm giving them suggestions and feedback. I help them implement, make it easy, but they're the ones who have to implement. So it's a very intangible service. And therefore how people buy that service is different to how they buy a physical product.

Copywriting was another skillset that I wanted to develop, something I've never done before. I wrote corporate emails and corporate policies and things like that, but never copy. That was another version of selling skillset that I didn't have. 

As you can see, even if you might have had some business experience, there will be some skills or subsets of skills that maybe you didn't have [00:19:00] opportunity to develop before you started your business.

You want to identify them and one by one start learning them and mastering them. Because those are the ones that will help you achieve your goals. 

And also mastering those skill sets, understanding the foundations of them will also help you down the line when you hire people. You'll know what to expect, what to look for. You'll know how to assess if whether the subcontractors or your own employees are effective in whatever you are asking them to do, because you understand what they're supposed to be doing. As opposed to hiring out something you completely don't understand, then it's hard to know if that person you hired out the is doing a good job or not? Because you have no reference. You have no understanding of what the results are supposed to look like or what the progress is supposed to look [00:20:00] like. 

Another thing that I wanna mention, going back to your self-development is critical, especially when you start leading people. For me as a leader, you always lead by example.

Therefore, if you cannot, let's say, hold your own commitments, make decisions, and follow through with them, then how are you going to expect others to do it, right? So when you have the employees, they will have to make decisions and then follow through with their decisions or even commitments that they make for you.

You cannot expect people to do that if you cannot do it on your own. And hiring and leading people, it takes a great leader. It's somebody who is able to trust themselves to do things, and then they're able to extend the trust to other people to do the right thing; to do things properly. 

It takes a secure and confident person to [00:21:00] hire people better than them in certain areas. So then those people can take, let's say, marketing or innovation or service delivery to the new levels. But if you're not secure and self-confident, you'll never feel comfortable hiring people who are better than you.

Then you'll always hire people who have a lower skill than yourself, and that's hard to grow your business. It's hard to scale your business when you don't hire people who are better than you in certain areas and compliment you really well.

The more self aware you are, emotionally intelligent you are, the more confident you are, the better people you attract. The better people you'll hire, the faster your business will grow. 

As you can see in terms of personal development and business skills, a lot of it is very intertwined.

It's very hard to have [00:22:00] clear messaging in your marketing, if you cannot communicate clearly. It's very hard to be great people leader, if you cannot lead your self and lead by example first. 

That's why when I coach my clients, I coach you on both. We do a lot of personal and self-development while we're also building some solid business skills.

 The last thing I wanna touch on here is then growing yourself as a service provider in your respective industries. For example, if you are a massage therapist, you want to learn about new science around massage therapy, maybe new technology, new tools, new techniques, and so same if you are a hairstylist or interior designer.

As a coach is the same. I always wanna stay on top of new coaching developments or even psychology and learning about new, discoveries in the psychology field to [00:23:00] understand my clients as best as possible. To have a plethora of great tools that I can use to help my clients achieve results faster and better.

How do I do it? Through books and reading different studies and books on psychology, coaching. 

Going and educating myself, elevating my skills through coaching masterminds, coaching conferences, things like that. Learning from other professionals who know more about the subjects or know more about the specific tool and method that I wanna learn.

It's same for you. Going to different conferences, trade shows, reading literature in your respective industry allows you to stay innovative. Allows you to stay a top expert in your field, which then creates more value to your clients. And this is one of the ways how you stand out as well.

If you're looking to [00:24:00] scale and grow your business, you need to start with you. With you as a leader of yourself, and you as a business owners with business skills. Even if you are good at certain things, there is always a higher level, a mastery level that you will need to achieve in order to get your business to the next level.

I'm always happy to help with the first and second area we covered today. All you need to do is visit my website, Https://StairwayToLeadership.com, and book a free consultation with me from there. Have a fantastic week, and talk to you next week. Bye.