33: Take Back Control of Your Life: Desiree’s Story
Behind Their Success: Ep 33
Desiree Petrich: [00:00:00] As strange as that sounds, it needs to be a priority for you to put yourself first because you are the vessel, you're the engine, you're the arm. The only way that you're going to be able to do things at the caliber that you want to is if you are capable of doing them. And when I put myself on the back burner, I was no longer capable.
Desiree Petrich: I was not nice to my husband or my children. My business was, I was struggling. I wasn't excited to be there. I was wanting to quit, like, All of these things spiraled from this one decision to no longer put myself first
Welcome to behind their success. This podcast is for people who are feeling stuck on their entrepreneur journey or in their careers. It's for people who want to scale and grow their businesses, learn about the power of mindset, or they just know there's more out there and they want to start making changes.
I'm Peyton Squires, the host of the podcast. I was never cut out to be an employee, and when I was an employee, I was bored out of my mind. So I made a plan. I studied and passed the CPA exam in eight months while working, [00:01:00] all with the end goal in mind of quitting my job and starting my own business. I did that in 2014, and it has been an amazing wild ride since.
So now let's hear from other entrepreneurs, and what mindsets, and probably more important, what actions they have taken that have created and led to their success.
Paden Squires: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Behind Their Success podcast. I'm Paden Squires, the host, and today we have Desiree Petrich. She is an author, speaker, corporate coach and trainer and the host of Lead With Confidence podcast. She founded her company Intentional Action in 2022 after losing her mom unexpectedly just two months after bringing her son home from the NICU.
Paden Squires: Her company, Intentional Action, focuses on helping high achievers become great leaders. She also recently published her book called Taking Intentional Action, How to Choose the Life You Lead. Desiree, welcome on Behind Their Success.
Desiree Petrich: Thank you, Peyton. I'm really excited [00:02:00] to be here. Yeah,
Paden Squires: absolutely, Desiree.
Paden Squires: So, just give us kind of a general overview of who you are and kind of what you do.
Desiree Petrich: Yeah, so I am Desiree Petrich. I'm from the Midwest, so very south, um, kind of the border between North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota, and Iowa, kind of all smack dab in there. So most people are like, you live in the middle of nowhere.
Desiree Petrich: That's exactly where I live. Kind of. So like my bio said, I started my company after my mom passed away in 2022. Uh, she left me a very small amount of money and I decided I wanted to create a legacy for her and myself for my kids. And I didn't want to play small anymore. So I used my love of personal growth and leadership development.
Desiree Petrich: And I decided to start a company. I didn't know what it was going to be. I didn't know what I wanted it to look like, but I knew that if I started, I would be able to create something that I loved.
Paden Squires: That's very cool. So, you know, you kind of had some stuff going on in 2022, had a [00:03:00] son, Ryan, and your, your mom passed away.
Paden Squires: Can you give us, I guess, a little more color to your journey of the, okay, you've started this company a couple of years ago and you're at now, and just tell us a little bit more some of the stuff you experienced.
Desiree Petrich: Yeah. Well, the funny thing is, in 2020, I was managing a dementia facility when the pandemic hit.
Desiree Petrich: I had a six month old daughter at home. I was overweight. I didn't like the way that I felt. And then the pandemic hit, everything was shut down around us except for healthcare, which I happened to be managing at the time. So 99 percent of Everything was out of my control. And I decided that I needed to take what little bit of control I had back.
Desiree Petrich: So I dove headfirst into personal development, leadership, content, all of the things, and it shifted the way that I approached the challenge. of all these things. I lost 30. I connected with my husband who had to be a stay at home dad at the time because you couldn't find daycare during the pandemic, especially for an [00:04:00] infant.
Desiree Petrich: And I started to connect not only with the individuals I was managing and co working with, but also with the community. And that just changed the trajectory of my life forever. It's what, you Made me fall in love with personal development. I've read 60 to a hundred books every year since then. And I just want to share that joy and that love and that catalyst with other people, because if one book and one message could change my life forever, I know that I have the potential to do that too.
Desiree Petrich: So where am I going with that? And how does it answer your question? I realized after my mom passed away that I was Okay, she was my best friend. I didn't understand, like, why am I not depressed? Why am I still finding joy and happiness and laughter every day, almost to the point where you're questioning why you don't feel more guilty than you do, which was a really hard concept for me, and I wanted to figure it out.
Desiree Petrich: And I realized that I had created this really strong foundation built on health habits. [00:05:00] You know, the reading, which was the mental health piece of it, sleep and relationships and all of these different pillars of life. I had been actively And intentionally creating this really strong foundation. So when my mom passed away, I didn't have to start over from scratch.
Desiree Petrich: I didn't have to do it alone because I had built all these things before. So ultimately, what I wrote my book about was how do you build that strong foundation of self prior to actually needing it? How can you do it so that when you get injured or fired or someone passes away, you don't have to start from scratch, which is essentially what I've built my entire business on.
Desiree Petrich: I work a lot in the corporate space with teams and it's, how can we bring responsibility and understanding and self awareness back to ourselves so that we can be the best version of ourselves to then contribute to the entire results of the team?
Paden Squires: Yeah. Yeah. That's really great stuff. So similar, similar type journey, I would say I started that journey and really.
Paden Squires: After I had my first kid, probably 2016, [00:06:00] 2017, I, you know, I was kind of on a self development journey. I was always kind into that, but that's when I got super intentional about it. do you find that there was like, you know, you said in 2020, the pandemic hit, was there like a specific moment where you said, Hey, I'm going to start doing all this stuff, or do you think it was more of a, you know, a combination of five or six things that.
Paden Squires: Pushed you into self development.
Desiree Petrich: Well, I was not a good leader and I knew it. I was 25 at the time I had a management degree and zero experience. So I knew that I was. I was working in healthcare in a management position without probably the knowledge and experience that I needed. I was micromanaging.
Desiree Petrich: I was fearful every day that someone was going to all of a sudden figure out that I had no idea what I was doing. None of us did, you know, during the pandemic, but it had been a year plus of feeling that way. And honestly, that wasn't the trigger for me though. It was, I felt really uncomfortable [00:07:00] being the weight that I was.
Desiree Petrich: And I was following this gal on Instagram and she was just so happy and positive and optimistic all the time. And I was like, what are you doing? Like, give me some of that. I want some of it. And she was a beach body coach. So she was, you know, teaching women how to love their body after. was her niche. and sh the difference between lo it off and just losing we So that's why I picked up It was this concept of, I
Desiree Petrich: But I've never been able to sustain it. So if personal development was the thing that was going to help me do that, I was willing to dive into it. And with one book, John Acuff wrote the book's finish. It set off this catalyst for me and it was the weight loss that ultimately started it, but every area of my life from there on out changed.
Desiree Petrich: So I would say that was kind of the trigger for me was actually more of an aesthetic feeling. [00:08:00] As opposed to outward. But I think that that's kind of what we need to work on first. We need to look inward on what we can change about ourselves.
Paden Squires: For sure. Yeah. And, um, same, same, very similar journey. I would say I got serious about my health.
Paden Squires: Christmas of 2020. And, and weirdly enough, I guess, you know, I've done enough personal development or what have you, and actually got a trainer for a little bit to add some accountability piece to me. And, um, I've never stopped. Like it's something that people ask me, like, how did I, you know, It's hard for me to even explain what was different this time and why, uh, you know, I, I, I guess I just did it enough and that habit finally stuck and then it became a part of my identity and then you get confidence from it.
Paden Squires: It just worked this time.
Desiree Petrich: Well, the funny thing is, is I actually, when I started my business, I was about six months in and things started to go really well and I was getting busier. I have two little kids, a two and a four year old at home. So. In order to put my [00:09:00] business first and my kids first, I felt like I needed to put health on the back burner.
Desiree Petrich: I did it intentionally and I gained a bunch of weight back and I got sick and I was throwing my back out and my neck out and I'm like, what's going on? It's like, that was an intentional choice that I made, but it just solidified for me exactly why health needs to be a priority in your business.
Desiree Petrich: As strange as that sounds, it needs to be a priority for you to put yourself first because you are the vessel, you're the engine, you're the arm. The only way that you're going to be able to do things at the caliber that you want to is if you are capable of doing them. And when I put myself on the back burner, I was no longer capable.
Desiree Petrich: I was not nice to my husband or my children. My business was, I was struggling. I wasn't excited to be there. I was wanting to quit, like, All of these things spiraled from this one decision to no longer put myself first. And that was the decision that I had made kind of on a whim. And it, unfortunately, I, I learned my lesson the hard way.[00:10:00]
Paden Squires: Yeah, well, and you know, the good thing is you learned the lesson, right? You're constantly self reflecting and looking at that. And it was like, okay, I made the conscious choice. Let's test this. We got the results back. And now, okay, well, obviously I'm not happy with those results. So we need to go back and change them.
Paden Squires: Um, and that's, you know, that's just the path of self discovery really. And really all of us are on that journey is try something, see the results, change something, try something again, kind of a scientific type process.
Desiree Petrich: And we all have 24 hours in a day. I will never say that we all have the same 24 hours in a day, because my life with a two and a four year old is going to be very different from my 18 year old sister, or, you know, from my dad who goes to work nine to five and then he's done.
Desiree Petrich: But I will say that we all get the opportunity to choose what priorities we put into those 24 hours. And I just hope that everyone Puts themselves as a priority in that, whether it's the boundaries that you're setting with other people, the health that you're, [00:11:00] giving to yourself. It is truly a gift that you have to take for yourself.
Paden Squires: it sounds counterintuitive on the surface, taking the time to do that and taking away from other things, but it actually, it adds so much more to you than the time it takes to work out and do that kind of thing.
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Paden Squires: So Desiree, tell us, what do you think is your best skill that's kind of led to your level of success?
Paden Squires: You know, you've written a book, you've done, you've done a lot of things here. Tell us, what do you think has led to a lot of that success?
Desiree Petrich: I always say that I am aggressively friendly. And that is kind of something I'm a disc consultant when I work with corporate teams. So that's something I've created from that.
Desiree Petrich: But to go back further with that, it's why do I have the personality style that I do? I think it's partly being the oldest child and having, you know, three younger sisters. I think it's partly having moved schools four different times. By the time I finally got into college, that need and the ability to create friends quickly and to kind of, you know, [00:13:00] Ask questions to get conversations started and not relying on other people to do that.
Desiree Petrich: My superpower in what it is that I do and why I Believe that I'm a good coach and a good facilitator is I can ask hard questions that immediately open people up to being vulnerable in a way that doesn't feel scary. And that has served me really well. I am a hundred percent transparent. You will learn more than you probably ever wanted to learn about me and my book, but it's because I don't, Believe that anyone should be ashamed of any part of their life.
Desiree Petrich: And if you just say things out loud, it immediately creates an opportunity to connect with others that you would not have if you're trying to stay service level.
Paden Squires: Yeah. Yeah. That's good stuff. And you know, what I would say is you, you know, you've done things like disc and I'm probably probably other things as well, but like you understand yourself, you understand where your skills are at.
Paden Squires: We're not at. And you, you know, you have high sociability skills, right? Um, you, you have the ability to speak to people and connect with people. It's [00:14:00] something that through different personality exams and stuff I've done is that I have a similar trait, the ability to work with people. And, and in my practice, you know, I, I do wealth and tax type stuff and it's a very personal type experience.
Paden Squires: Right. And, and I'm not even concerned about the problem, maybe that they're even presenting. I'm talking to the person and trying to figure it out. Why haven't they solved this problem themselves or what, what is happening there? because in my world, in the money world, it's mostly behavioral type issues and trying to find the underlying of habit change and different things to help them.
Paden Squires: Accomplish the goals. They actually want to.
Desiree Petrich: One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone asks for advice and then they don't do anything to take it. I'm like, if you don't like my advice, that's just fine. But then don't ask for it again. I have people that, you know, come to me multiple times and I give the same advice every time.
Desiree Petrich: I'm like, this advice is not going to change no matter how many times you [00:15:00] come to me for it. Sometimes the advice is what I've done in my own life, but isn't that what advice is, is what I have. other people are done to create the outcome that these other individuals are looking at you and feeling inspired or motivated by.
Desiree Petrich: So, I, I just, I really want to encourage anyone, if you're asking for a compliment from someone, and you want them to just say, you look really nice today, or you're doing exactly what you need to be doing, ask for that compliment. If what you want is advice, be ready to take it. Have enough self awareness to know that feedback isn't always positive.
Paden Squires: Yeah. Feedback's a, but it's a gift, right? Like it's, it's somebody giving you another perspective that maybe you just haven't seen or completely oblivious to because we all got massive blind spots in our own, in our own world. So having people around you that are truly your friends and truly your friends that are willing to call you out.
Paden Squires: When you need to be called out, you know, surrounded by the people that just tell you you're [00:16:00] great, um, it's not going to make you any better.
Desiree Petrich: Yeah, and my foundation of self framework, the framework in my book is self engagement, we talked about those habits, the habit creation. Then it's self worth. Do you believe that you not only are worthy of getting this thing that you want, but that you can actually get to it?
Desiree Petrich: And then it's self awareness. leadership, emotional and social intelligence, things that you will never be able to claim success in because you can continuously grow in all of those things. And self awareness is why I read personal development. If you are triggered by something someone says in a book or a podcast or in person, it's probably the thing you need to dive into the most.
Paden Squires: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, when you go back to talking about receiving advice from people and it's, It's something even my wife and I are, we try to implement and talk about it's like, okay, we start to have a conversation. It's like, what do you want from me in this conversation?
Paden Squires: Do you want me to listen and just not really say anything and just sit here because you want to talk to somebody? Or do you want my advice [00:17:00] and me to solve the problem? Because often you get into male, female dynamics and this is all generally speaking, but like. the man's just there trying to solve the problem, and the woman's not even looking for that.
Paden Squires: Yeah. So it's just total miscommunication, right? And, and that, that goes across all facets, all work, all everything, not just marriage, but it's just pure miscommunication among people.
Desiree Petrich: My husband is too optimistic. It's annoying. He's like, glass is more than half filled all the time. And I'm like, can you just be mad with me?
Desiree Petrich: Like just be really mad with me for like one minute. That's all I want. But I appreciate his. His optimism 99 percent of the time.
Paden Squires: Yeah, that's good. So Desiree, what would you say is the best decision you've ever made on your journey?
Desiree Petrich: I have spent a lot of money, and if you were on the outside looking in, you would question if there was outcomes that came from some of the decisions that I made. [00:18:00] But I truly believe that every investment that you make in yourself is going to teach you something about yourself, and in this case, about my business.
Desiree Petrich: So, the decisions that I have made Could have potentially backfired and some of them, again, I'm from the outside looking in, maybe would appear that they did, but I've learned so much about myself in this last year and a half of starting and creating my business. So I would say the best decision I've made is continuously investing in myself and knowing that that is worth it.
Paden Squires: Yeah. I've talked about this in previous episodes. Um, I spent a lot of money on myself constantly and more than almost anybody I know.
Paden Squires: I mean, there's people I know that've been more because they're even that much further ahead of me in different areas. But yeah. Especially as you start to have a little bit of a success. Yeah. I mean, just doubling down, tripling down on your skill set and growing yourself is going to return.
Paden Squires: Bonkers amount of money than doing something else with it.
Desiree Petrich: Well, my [00:19:00] husband doesn't quite understand. We've stopped having these conversations because he trusts me to make my own decisions, but he owns a lawn care and snow removal company. So when he's buying things, it's tractors and snow blowers and lawnmowers.
Desiree Petrich: And like, there's something tangible and he can see it and it makes sense to him. But I'm like, I just spent 15, 000 on a six month coaching program. And he's like, you what? And I'm like, but just imagine the returns that are going to come from this. Like, it's just such an interesting conversation in a services based industry where you're trying to grow your knowledge and your skill set versus a service based industry where you are providing a tangible service.
Desiree Petrich: So very fun and dynamic.
Paden Squires: Yeah. And it's, I mean, like an example I've heard somebody say before, but it's like, so let's say you're, you have no skillset or a high school student just got out of high school. You have no skill set, like you can go make minimum. But if you're willing to take a couple hundred bucks, go like, say to a, weekend course training to become like a CNA or a phlebotomist or something that you can learn in a [00:20:00] weekend.
Paden Squires: You can invest the couple hundred bucks in yourself. And then all of a sudden, instead of making 15 bucks an hour, you're making 25 bucks an hour because you invested 200 bucks in yourself and a weekend. And you've like, you know, 50 percent increase in income, just by taking that tiny of an investment.
Desiree Petrich: 100%.
Paden Squires: So on the flip side, your great decision was that you constantly invest in yourself. What's, uh, one of those big, bad decisions that we can all learn from?
Desiree Petrich: Oh, boy. Um, well, to be completely transparent, because I told you that I am, and on the Enneagram, I am an 8. A very aggressive 8. But if you know anything about the Enneagram, you have wings to that.
Desiree Petrich: And you kind of fall into one side or the other. Sometimes you're, you know, Mine is discernment. If you go into the nine Enneagram, there's a lot of discernment. There's making decisions based on what other people think, what other people are going to say. You walk into a room, you see someone sad, you [00:21:00] immediately walk to them because you want to make them feel better.
Desiree Petrich: never trying to do anything that could potentially upset someone, all of these different things. And when I first went to this training, In Enneagram, I'm sitting there almost just sobbing because I'm like, Oh my gosh, that's so mean. It's like you hit the nail on the head. And I think the worst decision that I've made is there's this one specific individual that happens to be a family member that I filter a lot of my decisions through.
Desiree Petrich: Not talking with them about it, but thinking, What will they think? How will they respond to this? My entire book was written With that filter on it to the point where when I went through the first round of edits, I Changed a lot of my book because I decided I didn't want to filter The content or the message through someone else's eyes.
Desiree Petrich: And this individual ended up not liking my book, not because there was anything about them or not about them. They just didn't, they don't think personal development has any merit. And that to me, I was like, it was never going to make them happy. So why [00:22:00] did I spend a year filtering what I was doing through them?
Desiree Petrich: So the worst decision that I made was going through my business, trying to please someone who was never going to support me anyway. If that makes sense.
Paden Squires: Yeah. you know, sizing you up, uh, from, you know, the personality stuff that we typically use is called culture index and you would have a very high sociability score on it.
Paden Squires: And, um, yeah, that is being able to relate and be empathetic and whatever with people. The flip side of that is, if you really care about other people, right. And that can certainly be a hindrance and, um, something. I am highly sociable, same kind of thing, right? You're, you're constantly concerned with what other people think.
Paden Squires: You, but yeah, that's, that's the downside to it for sure. So going back to the beginning, that's right. What is one piece of advice you'd give yourself from today's perspective?
Desiree Petrich: Get out in the community. I know this. I worked as an events coordinator for a while and networking was the reason I fell in love with [00:23:00] businesses.
Desiree Petrich: It's why I work in a corporation. I fell in love with the concept of teams and not growth. And when COVID hit back in 2020, all of a sudden that ability to get out in our community was taken away. And I think unfortunately that has trailed into this now 2024 era of, we Talk on zoom, you know, and we can still network online, but it's not the same thing as getting out and engaging in your community.
Desiree Petrich: So if you have a local chamber of commerce or, uh, any sort of event, I just think that there's so much to be said and so much to be gained from creating those connections. And I need to take this advice myself. Actually, my biggest client I got from driving an hour to a networking event one time.
Desiree Petrich: I have not been back to that networking event in three months. I'm like, that's so stupid. Like, why wouldn't you just go? So my advice is get out in your community, grow and network with the people that are close with you, and share what it is that you do with no discernment [00:24:00] other than to make sure that you are doing what you need to do to, to best serve the community.
Desiree Petrich: Your business and the community and the clients that you serve.
Paden Squires: Yeah. That's, that's great advice and something that I, you know, I think I was doing, but didn't realize, you know, I wouldn't even necessarily do it intentionally, but making connections and being out there and you realize you're really out there planting a whole bunch of seeds.
Paden Squires: And if you do that and show up and be somebody, somebody can rely on and not necessarily even have any expectations of it, do that for several years. And you'll be amazed. All the things that are going to come because it really is just planting seeds and seeing what happens, but you're never going to get any harvest or anything if you're not out there planting seeds.
Paden Squires: Right. But a lot of seeds are going to be wasted, right? Like you're not going to get anything from it and you're going to say, Oh, well, look, I wasted that time. I wasted those two hours, but you don't realize that you have to waste those two hours and do that a bunch of times because the payoffs are even bigger.
Desiree Petrich: Truly, I was just on a podcast yesterday and he used this quote, and I'm going to butcher it, so I [00:25:00] apologize. But the concept is going to be there, something along the lines of, You can open an apple and see how many seeds are inside. You can count the number of seeds. But you cannot count the number of apples in a single seed.
Desiree Petrich: One seed planted, whether you change one person's life, or one person's mind, or that person introduces you to another person that you need to know, planting that one seed, you will never know all of the things that will come from it, and you don't know how long it's going to take, but it's worth the time to plant the seed.
Desiree Petrich: So just going off of what you said, I think I did okay. I didn't butcher it as badly
Paden Squires: Yeah. So Desiree, tell us a little bit more about your book and like, what, what are the readers going to get from your book?
Desiree Petrich: I have a mentor and he does something very similar to what I do, but he's like 30 years longer in the business than me. And he read my book. He said. In his advanced praise, which is what they call essentially the testimonial on the back page, he said, I dare you to read this book and not find yourself within the pages.
Desiree Petrich: And that [00:26:00] was my whole goal, was that I did not want it to be a memoir about me. I'm not famous, no one cares. But what I wanted it to be was just this relatable story that no matter what you're going through, You will find yourself in the pages of this book, and I ask a lot of open-ended questions because I want that self-reflection to come out in the book as much as possible.
Desiree Petrich: So there are chapters about how to evaluate your excuses. I don't believe in eliminating your excuses because your excuses are there for a reason and we need to evaluate them in a way that helps us to make decisions going forward. There's chapters about how I've completely. Seemingly failed at everything and how I came back up from that and how people told me that it was probably a good thing I was failing because it helped me to learn and there's there's literally a chapter in there called Everything else all of the amazing concepts that I've learned that just didn't fit elsewhere in the book so this book is just a combination of all of the things that I've learned in [00:27:00] my 30 years and I I would read it.
Desiree Petrich: I think that's the biggest compliment an author can give to their own book is the fact that when I went through and edited it, I was just so happy and proud of what was in the book because I know that it has the potential to be that catalyst that I, I have found in other books.
Paden Squires: That's, that's awesome stuff, Desiree.
Paden Squires: So her book is Taking Intentional Action, How to Choose the Life You Lead. Desiree, uh, what is the best way that any of our listeners can connect with you? You know, they like what they hear, they may check out the book. Uh, what's the best way they can connect with you?
Desiree Petrich: I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. So Desiree Petrick on LinkedIn.
Desiree Petrich: If you want a list of all of my favorite books, memoirs, fiction, nonfiction, parenting, you can go to www.desireepetrich.com/books and you can download that list for free. I also am on Instagram and all of the different places. So my book was a number one new release on Amazon. You can go check it out. I would [00:28:00] absolutely love to hear what you think.
Desiree Petrich: And I also host a podcast with confidence. which is about how you can manifest a belief in yourself that no matter the situation you find yourself in, you have the skills and the knowledge and the mindsets to overcome anything.
Paden Squires: That's awesome. Desiree, I appreciate you coming on. We had a great conversation and listeners.
Paden Squires: We will catch you next time.
Desiree Petrich: Thanks.
Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you found it valuable, please rate, review, and share it. That is the best way to help us build this and reach more people as we're trying to accomplish our goal of help creating more healthy, wealthy, and wise entrepreneurs. You can follow us on social media by searching for me, Payton Squires, or going to paytonsquires.
com. On the website and social media, we're always sharing tips of personal growth, and there we can actually interact. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks guys.
