Maguie studied business administration and worked in management, advertising and sales. She later studied clinical psychology, ran a school of about 800 students for eight years and today sees patients online in different countries. She has been through almost every world we talk about on this podcast: employment, sales, management and entrepreneurship.
We talked with her about something almost nobody covers when talking about business: what you feel while you are building a business. How you react under pressure, what you do with complaining and with guilt, and why "failure" means something else to her. This is what helped those of us who run a business the most.
The problems she faced
1.Exploding when the pressure rises
We all know a boss, a customer or ourselves on a bad day. Maguie says that when emotion escalates, reasoning shuts down: we see it in shouting, accusations or decisions made in the heat of the moment. Her first boss was very demanding and did not accept problems, only solutions, but she always insisted on treating people well: "ease up a little".
2.Complaining and blaming others
Complaining is part of life, she clarifies, and letting yourself feel is fine. The problem is staying there. For her, complaining makes you poorer and gratitude makes you richer, and the step from complaining to taking responsibility is small, but hard.
She also recommends watching what is behind your complaint: what are you feeling? Where does that judging voice come from?
3.A change that is scary
About 20 years ago she was offered a phone sales job, with no fixed salary, only commission, at a time when her father was very ill and she had a young daughter. She took it. After coming back from a short break following her father's passing, the company recognized her for having sold 43 courses. During the three years she was there she was the number one salesperson, and sold up to 70 courses a month.
Her conclusion: trust yourself, have determination, lose the fear and step out of your comfort zone.
4.Leading people without losing the human side
As the head of a school with 800 students and a difficult teaching staff, she learned that working with human beings "is not easy at all". Her answer was emotional intelligence: being a leader means taking your team's ideas into account and putting them into practice.
5.When the market changes and you have to reinvent yourself
Before the pandemic, Maguie was already giving therapy at home. When lockdown came and she saw how much families were suffering, she opened a Zoom therapy option. Today, through referrals, she has patients in several countries.
She also proposed a live talk on how to understand teenagers, and that opened a new field of work for her. Her rule: where others see a problem, she looks for the opportunity.
6.The guilt that paralyzes
In the conversation it came up that almost every mom feels guilt at some point, and many women entrepreneurs carry it. Maguie's proposal is adaptive guilt: instead of getting stuck, ask yourself what you can do to make up for what happened. According to her, guilt, fear and anger paralyze the nervous system and block reasoning.
What she learned (and it can save you years)
1.Stop, pause, breathe, feel and observe
This is the emotional intelligence technique she shares most. When you feel you are about to explode: you stop, you pause, you breathe, you feel what emotion you have and you observe where the judgment you are making comes from. Breathing keeps the emotion from escalating to another level.
2.Change the meaning of "failure"
Maguie replaced the word complicated and the word failure with area of opportunity. When something came up, she took it on and started studying it, like when she was asked if she knew how to use a certain computer program and started learning it the next day.
3.Set limits and be aware of your rights
To set a limit you have to know your assertiveness rights, she says. For example, if you do not want to be yelled at, your limit is not to engage with people who do it, and not to justify it. Limits are with yourself, not with others.
4.Ask for professional support
She insists that when sensitive topics come up, having your own psychologist is "a basic need, like groceries", not just for people who are "crazy". She warns that general information from books and podcasts helps, but to apply it to yourself you need personal support. This article is a summary of the conversation and does not replace professional help.
5.Balance is peace
For her, when something steals your peace there is no balance. Balance is when what you think, do and act on are on the same line. And her rule for guiding others: you cannot take anyone to a place you have not been yourself.
6.Success is not luck
Maguie distinguishes between success and luck: luck is used by those who place what they are in something or someone else, and success belongs to those who believe in themselves and work to make it real. She also recommends surrounding yourself with a tribe, two or three friends who back you up in hard moments.
“Complaining makes you poorer, gratitude makes you richer.”
Is something like this happening to you?
Maguie shared five characteristics of people of excellence. Check how you are doing:
Listen to the full episode
This is only a summary. The full conversation has many more details, stories and tips. Watch it in full on YouTube (it is recorded in Spanish; turn on the captions and choose Auto-translate to read it in English) or find every episode on the Pandas Creativos podcast page (in Spanish).
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