Episode 250 Special - What I’m Building Behind the Scenes (New Curriculum + More)

We made it to Episode 250! 

I honestly can’t believe I’m saying that. 250 weeks of showing up, recording, teaching, learning, and building this community with you. 

So today’s episode is a little different. It’s part celebration, part gratitude (because I don’t take your time for granted), and part behind-the-scenes.

I’m sharing why I do what I do, what I believe about building a business that supports your life (not consumes it), and a few things I’m quietly building right now that I’m really excited about, including a big update I’m creating for Diamond Effect Group.

And if you’re in that season where you’re working hard, doing “all the things,” and you just want a simpler, clearer road to your first $100K… I also have something coming up for you.

• Register for free online event - Back to Basics: Simplify Your Road to $100K (May 19, 1:00–4:00 PM Eastern): https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/back-to-basics-simplify-your-road-to-100k-event-tickets-1987605816502?aff=oddtdtcreator&keep_tld=true
• Let's scale your business! Book a complimentary consultation - https://calendly.com/maggie-s2l/discovery-call-1

If you’ve been listening for a while, thank you!

And if you’re new here, welcome. I’m so glad you found your way to the Diamond Effect Podcast.

Transcript

Hello dear Diamond Effect podcast listeners. Welcome back to the episode 250 what, 250 weeks without. Fail, which amounts to over four years of podcasting and it made me think it's a quarter of a thousand. Isn't that crazy? So I'm going to pause and celebrate a little bit with you this milestone because.

It wouldn't be possible without you if I didn't have listeners who come every week or whenever the episode speaks to you. And listen, it would be hard to stick with it for two 50 weeks. So I wanna thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for coming back.

Thank you for referring this podcast to other people who [00:01:00] you think would benefit. I hear that occasionally from people who listen to my podcast, so I know you do that, and I really, really appreciate. I'm grateful I don't take you for granted. I know we are all busy and for whatever reason.

You decide to pick my podcast and listen out of everything else that's out there. So thank you so much. In this episode, I wanted to make it a little bit different, maybe more reflective, more of a reminder why I do what I do, and give you a little bit insights into what's coming up into my coaching, what I'm working on.

I thought that would be a fun episode to actually talk about it.

Now before we dive in, I have one random thought. So I thought about, oh, 250 episodes is a quarter of a thousand. So wouldn't it be fun for me to have a goal to go. All the way to a thousand [00:02:00] episodes, which means thousand weeks of Maggie's moments in the morning on Monday morning and thousand Friday episodes that are longer and more in depth, more valuable.

So I did some high level math. If it took me four plus years to create 250 episodes. Then I would need 12 more years to get to a thousand that would make me 59. So this year I'm 47 right now, plus 12, that's 59.

So I'm not sure if that's a realistic goal, if I will go on that long, but maybe I will. But wouldn't that be cool? So I just thought I would share that thought with you.

And if you're new to the podcast, then maybe you just discovered it last week, or this is the first episode you're ever listening to. I wanna reintroduce myself just [00:03:00] quickly and tell you, or remind you why I do what I do. Jesus.

My name is Maggie Otten. I'm a business and leadership coach. I'm based in greater Toronto area in Canada. I help service-based business owners grow their businesses to their first a hundred K, and they scale their businesses from the first a hundred key to multiple six, seven figures, and do it in a way that's not overwhelming, that doesn't burn them out that.

If they want to set up their business as a sellable asset, so something that they could sell or pass on down the line. Because as you do that, it also detaches you from the business and you're able to enjoy life or have a life as you're running a business. And that's a very important thing for me because I do believe that.

Life needs to be lived. It's too short not to. It's too short to wait [00:04:00] for someone magical day to have fun and enjoy life once I reach certain things, because we never know, and it's possible to grow and scale a successful business while also. Having a life while also benefiting from just focusing on the personal things that are important to you.

And I actually think not only it's possible, but it helps your business grow. You are a better leader for your business. You have better ideas, better solutions. You make better decisions when you are more of a balanced, rounded. Human being. So that's my philosophy. Now, why I do what I do.

There is more than one reason, but the main reason is that I really know I'm meant to be doing that. Okay. Throughout my career and [00:05:00] my life, I followed the path, the different paths. I think the experiences that I've had in my life, in my professional career led me here to where I am. I was meant to discover my passion for helping people grow. One leader, one business owner, one person at a time, giving them what they need to reach their fullest potential, and with that, create a business that they love and impact their families, their communities.

It took me half of my life probably to figure that out, but better late than ever. And whenever I coach my clients or I record this podcast, or I speak in front of people, whether it's two people or a hundred people, or whether I write an email or a post, I know I'm meant to help this way, [00:06:00] just this deep, knowing intuition, values. However you wanna name it. I know I'm in the right place.

It's very fulfilling to me, knowing that I can use my skills and my perspective and my experience to help my clients succeed. And also seeing their transformation and how they change as humans, as leaders, and how that impacts. Many people around them.

I really believe in making impact 1% at a time, one conversation at a time, and the ripple effect that it has. Once it starts, those results start. Compounding. So I love using my skills that way, where I can see the results. It's like an artist or a tradesperson, right? An artist. [00:07:00] Paints a painting or creates a song or a tradesperson builds a house and sees the results of it, and I think that's very fulfilling for most people in those professions or those occupations.

For me, that fulfillment comes from seeing human beings grow and be better versions of themselves, more skilled, more confident, more successful. In business, but that very often translates into their life.

And as I think about my journey and I look at my clients and so on, I also wanna show women immigrants like myself, people who maybe came to the realization as to what did they wanna do when they grew up later in life, just like me, wherever you are in your life and you're thinking, I'm too old, I'm too young.

I don't have any network. I don't know people, I don't have the resources to show you that [00:08:00] it's never too late. You can always figure things out. You can always find solutions to your roadblocks, and that makes you a stronger leader, that makes you a stronger business owner. And I. Want to spread that message.

I wanna coach my clients on it. I wanna be example of that as well for my clients and as many people as possible. And I love business. I think business is fun. As business owners, we solve a lot of problems in this world, helping a lot of people through our services, our offerings, through our businesses, growing and impacting our communities.

Small business owners, when they succeed, they leave more money in their communities out of each dollar that they make than big corporations. So we have a bigger impact. Into the [00:09:00] wellbeing of everybody around us than let's say a big corporation.

And growing a business can be so creative. You get to decide as a business owner, how are you gonna grow it, your strategy, how are you gonna package your services? You know who you're gonna help, how are you gonna craft the client experience? It's I think it's super fun.

With your business, you can create financial freedom. I want to do that for myself. I'm doing it for myself and I want to help my clients to do that, to make more income, therefore more profit, gain more money, so then they can create that financial freedom for themselves. They have more choices in their lives and therefore also more positive impact.

I also want to normalize ambition and high achievement, [00:10:00] especially in women. So majority of my clients, about 90 to 95% depending on time. Are women. Yes, I have some fabulous men as clients, but a majority of them are women. And sometimes as women we don't play success. We are ashamed to be ambitious, to want to build wealth and have a life.

We are scared of money or how we would be perceived if we had money. We have so many limiting beliefs. Thinking that money somehow will make us, bad people or whatever. And I want to spread the message that it's okay or even it's amazing to be successful. And at the same time, while you're successful, you can be still and you are a great person, a grand mom, a great, leader, partner.

Because I truly believe that money and [00:11:00] power actually. Elevate who you already are. So if you are a good person, you'll actually be even better and make more positive impact when you are resourced and wealthy. Now, if you're a bad person, that's, elevate that, but for my experience, my clients are good human beings and helping them be more resourced actually.

Allows them to. Have more positive impact, donate to charities that they wanna donate, help family members who, people that they care about, input more, investment into their communities. And that's what I'm seeing over and over. And I'm very passionate about expanding that. So you can be ambitious.

It's great to be a high achiever. And she can learn how to also enjoy life and have that integration or harmony into [00:12:00] it. And I'm super passionate about helping my clients achieve that.

So as we speak right now, as a coach, I have two main offers. I have small group coaching diamond effect, which really focuses on getting business owners to the, to their first a hundred K. And why do I think it's important? Because. This is the stage where it's hard to get the business of the ground and not only make the first. $10,000 or $30,000 or sign the first clients, that's probably the easiest part. But to keep signing the clients and to build momentum and build consistency where you can get to the first a hundred K.

And when you do it right, when you build some good foundations and you develop business skillsets as a business owner [00:13:00] that will position you much better, and you'll have so much stronger business as you scale to six and seven figures, and I see a lot of demand and need for support in that stage of business.

Now I have great clients in this group. I have those ambitious, high achieving women who want to succeed. And there are so much more of them that I wanna help. And what I'm seeing in the industry, a lot of. Consultants and coaches or marketing agencies is focused usually on the businesses that are past that stage, that are in six, multiple six and seven figures.

Because A, it's easier to sell for those clients, they're more resourced. It requires, it doesn't require a steep learning [00:14:00] and skill building, a lot of industry out there don't bother to support early on stages or business owners who haven't reached that milestone yet, whether you know they've been in business for two years or 11 years, because it's also not easy on like the coaching and consultant parts to figure out how to support them and how to get them, but.

I think

because I think it requires more of a comprehensive support. It's not just about, oh, let's generate leads and see what happens. When a business owner doesn't have. Sales skills where they can convert those leads or let's streamline your processes. Where right now business owner doesn't have enough clients to even think about what the process looks like.

There isn't a lot of industry support there for this stage of business owner. I [00:15:00] see this group being underserved because it requires a comprehensive approach and. Lucky me, I have that experience. Okay. Through my experience in business working for small businesses and then for corporations that were scaling lines of business, I've done so many things in my career.

That I understand business from many different aspects, and I have the skillset and experience from all those perspective that I can now give to our clients. So that's why I created Diamond Effect Group to support my clients from every aspect of growing a business to that first milestone.

I know how to make things very simple so they're easy to understand and therefore easy to apply. So that's why my clients are getting great results in that group. Now, I have some projects that I'm working on this year for the group as I'm growing it, [00:16:00] and I do wanna scale it. So that's what I wanna share with you.

This year I'm working on. New curriculum.

For the video training part. So the group is structured in a way when we have weekly calls in small groups where I coach every single client in that group on their path, on their strategy, on the implementation. We figure out ways how to implement things, how to make it easy, how to be consistent, how to deal with this particular client or this particular situation.

So there's a lot of deep diving and coaching. Also part of the group package is video training that helps my clients gain those foundational. Skills and business knowledge, and it's done in a very simple way. It's very practical. You're not going to school to learn things you'll never [00:17:00] apply.

And those videos that are out there right now, they've been there since the group started, like this podcast over four years ago, and I've realized that as. I coach more and more clients and I grow as a coach and develop new concept or have a better way of explaining stuff. I'm ready to create a brand new curriculum.

So this is what I'm working on this year. Right now I'm at this stage of actually creating.

Right now I'm actually at this stage where the curriculum is ready and I'm creating outlines for each video. And once I've done that, sometime in the summer I'll be recording the training. So my goal is to release the curriculum sometime either. Okay, in the last quarter of this year, so November, December, or January, February, [00:18:00] 2027, that's plan B.

But so far I'm a little bit ahead of schedules. I'm hoping the new curriculum will be coming out soon. So my clients, if you're listening to it, it's very exciting. I know you can't wait for it. I can't wait for you to. Watch the curriculum because there will be things that will either refresh your knowledge or your skillset, or I'll say them in a different way than what it's in the portal, in the business skill learning portal, they're right now.

So it will help you solidify a lot of concepts to our coaching on they week after week. And if you're thinking of joining Diamond Effect Group, you are in that. Category of business owners who are still growing to their first six figures. You don't want to miss it. I'm very excited about it. It's going to be great.

So that's one thing that I'm working [00:19:00] on in Diamond Effect Group, and I'm thinking about some couple of other additional valuable.

Things that I want to add this year to the grip.

We already do outside of coaching calls, we have quarterly reviews. We have occasional training, whether it's on specific social media platforms or AI or anything else. But I always keep thinking, how can I help my clients get better and faster results? So I have some ideas in mind that we'll be implementing this for next year.

Now if you're listening to this and you're like, great, Maggie, but what about me? I'm already in, six figure income, multiple six, wanting to scale to seven or beyond, and I still have challenges. Can you help me? Yes, I can. I do help business owners who are in these more advanced stages of growing and scaling their [00:20:00] business in my one-on-one private work, because I love to dive deep into a business that's already more established and have more complexity in it.

And I see also the main, the need for the clients that I help is turning. Themselves or building the skillset and identity of A CEO. A lot of you are great service providers and you're great hustlers. You build your business up to this point through hustle, hard work, and serving your clients. But right now, what might be stopping you or what might be creating lot of issues in your business?

Fact that you are not being a CEO and you lack some skillsets, whether it is how to lead a team. And by leading a team, it's not just hiring, it's about coaching the team, addressing difficult situation or [00:21:00] addressing some things that are not working, not only in a timely manner, because sometimes we procrastinate on that and there just issues just keep compiling, but also in a way that's constructive for you and your team members, whether they're contractors, part-timers, or full-timers, does not matter.

Being A CEO also is about balancing the long-term vision of your business and doing things that will allow for it to happen. So putting things in place right now that might not be bringing you money right now, but it allow you to scale.

As you can see, just what I'm doing with my Diamond Fit group, right? I'm working on a curriculum. It's a project that will, it's taking me some time. It's not gonna add to my bottom line and make me any money right now, but it will allow me to scale. So being able to balance the working. In your [00:22:00] business, serving your clients, that makes money right now, and then putting things in place for further scaling because you are clear on where are you going?

You have a clear vision. It's a skillset that I teach my clients to do and then learning how to think. Systems and processes, how to see patterns in your business, how to streamline things, how to automate things. It doesn't mean you have to do it all by yourself. You might be resourced enough to hire help, but you need to understand.

What are you looking for? What do you want? And then bring in the experts or bring in help, right? You are the CEO of the business. You have to understand your business inside out, and that includes your numbers, not only financial, but also your operational numbers, how they work together.

Learning how to get the information out of those numbers to help you [00:23:00] improve, to help you grow better and so on. So that's a lot of work that I do in my one-on-one client with my one-on-one clients, which also includes growth strategy, diving deep, increasing conversions, thinking of better ways or different ways to bring in leads, better conversions.

Improving your sales process to convert more of those leads. Looking at the customer journey and building your business as a brand, not just with pretty logo and colors, but as a brand that makes an impact on your customer, that makes them feel the way you want them to feel that then you can.

The brand that you understand inside out. So then when you bring in employees to deliver the service to help you, you can train them on it. So then the client experience doesn't suffer [00:24:00] just because somebody else is delivering the service.

I usually see when my clients start working with me, is that, oh, I wish I have come to you sooner. Why did I wait? I know that the economy is slower right now and swan, but that's when it's harder to grow a business, that's where. Maybe some skill gaps or perspective gaps, or inefficient inefficiencies in your business hurt even more.

They're exposed even more because it's not as easy to sign clients. It's not as easy to grow, so don't wait. Get help, whether it's me or somebody else does not matter, but grow yourself as a leader.

Now one last thing I wanna talk about, and that's more of a timely manner. So if you are listening to this podcast in April or early May, 2026, tune up. I am running a free event [00:25:00] online.

Called back to basic, simplify your road to your first a hundred K. So this is for those of you who are somewhere in between making zero income to, let's say $80,000 or less, whether you are in the second year of the business who've been trying to get to a hundred K for 11 years, nothing is lost. You can do it, you might just need.

Clarity on what's stopping you, clarity on what to fix and what to do to get there, but you can get there. Okay? You're not a lost cause. I promise you. If you've started the business and you've run it and you manage to sign enough clients to make the first, do your $30,000 or $50,000, and especially if you've been doing it consistently.

You can totally scale to six figures. The event is on May 19th, [00:26:00] one to 4:00 PM Eastern. I am going to put. A link in the show notes for you to join. It's free. It's a great event when it's a workshop networking event training. I also coach during that event, so I answer your specific question. There's a lot of value as one of the participants from the last event I ran said it was an afternoon well spent.

I promise you're not gonna regret it. So have a look in the show notes. Join me in the event. And if you're ready to get help, grow faster, make it easier for yourself. We can also talk during a complimentary consultation as to how I can help you and how I see.

And what I think you need to get to the next level, whatever it looks like for you. I will put a link to my calendar when you can book that consultation and we can just chat one-on-one. Have a great [00:27:00] week. Thank you for being with me. Whether it's just this episode or for the past 250 weeks, and I wanna applaud you if you're stuck around with me for the past four years.

Thank you. I appreciate you so much. Talk to you next week. Bye.