#600 Snezana Stefanovic: Grow Your Business With a Growth Mindset

What if the secret to business growth wasn’t more strategy—but a stronger mindset?

In this powerful episode of Talking with the Experts, host Rose Davidson speaks with business coach and leadership trainer Snezana Djuric-Stefanovic about the transformative power of a growth mindset for entrepreneurs and leaders.

Snezana dives deep into how business owners can learn to trust their ability to adapt, overcome failure, and continue moving forward—no matter how many hats they wear. She shares actionable tools for resilience, productivity, and leadership that equip you to face the ups and downs of entrepreneurship without burning out.

You'll hear:

• Why mindset is the foundation of sustainable success.
• How to bounce back quickly from setbacks.
• Tools to strengthen your mental muscle, boost confidence, and stay focused on your goals.

Whether you’re in the early stages of building your business or leading a team through change, this episode is packed with empowering insights and practical strategies to support your growth—personally and professionally.

🎯 If you're ready to lead with confidence and unlock your full potential, this conversation is your catalyst.

👉 Don’t forget to subscribe to Talking with the Experts on your favourite podcast app and YouTube.

✨ CONNECT WITH SNEZANA

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/snezana-djuric

Website: https://www.snowation.com

📍 PROMOTION

https://snowation.com/one-on-one-coaching/

#TalkingwiththeExperts #RoseDavidson #GrowthMindset #BusinessCoaching #LeadershipDevelopment #EntrepreneurMindset #PodMatch #ResilientLeadership

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Transcript

Voiceover | 00:00
Welcome to Talking with the Experts. This is where we discuss great ideas to take your business to the next level. How do we know these ideas work? Well it's because we're talking with business owners who are using these ideas. Business owners who have years of experience and expertise. All things business, by business owners, for business owners. And now, here is your host, Rose Davidson. 

 Rose | 00:30
Hello, welcome to Talking with the Experts. I'm your host, Rose Davidson from rosedavidson.com.au. My very great pleasure to introduce to Talking with the Experts, Snezana Stefanovic. And we're going to be discussing... Growth mindset in business. Snezana says you can do anything you set your mind. Mind too and with the right mindset and that's her motto in life and in business. She is a business coach and a leadership trainer. As a coach, she focuses on helping individuals and teams develop growth mindset through goals, productivity and accountability. And as a trainer, she helps managers develop their leadership skills to develop strong, effective, efficient teams. When she's not coaching or leading training, she enjoys hiking, reading and writing. She's an occasional runner and a Doberman owner. Welcome, Snezana. How are you today? 

 Snezana | 01:31
Well, thank you for having me. And yes, that Doberman piece always gets the attention. 
 So I always leave it there. You know, you have to leave some curiosity for people to start asking questions. 

 Rose | 01:43
Absolutely. So when you started your business, you know, what prompted you to go into this field? 

 Snezana | 01:53
Well, I've always been interested in personal development, most than anything else. And, you know, through my experience, school and college, I was always curious about how to be more effective, more efficient, more productive, because I've always heard of all these people, you know, doing amazing things. And I was always curious, well, what is it about their days? Or what is it about them, when they can make it all happen? And so as I started my professional journey, I started by education, I'm a teacher. 
 So I'm a teacher of English language. And I've been teaching English language for a long time. And that gave me a lot of knowledge on how we learn, especially for language acquisition, so how we acquire language. And that really got me curious about the neural aspects of it all. 
 So when we got to neuro linguistics and all of that, I got really curious about things. And then unfortunately, I didn't teach much, I got into business soon after college as a manager. 
 And then through my management career, I focus a lot on professional development in addition to personal. And as time went by, I was thinking, okay, what is my next step? How can I take this? To a different level or do something different with it. And coaching came as a, I guess, a natural transition. I took a course on it. I wanted to gain coaching as a skill rather than anything else. And through that training, I did training with the coaching center, which is accredited by ICF, which stands for International Coaching Federation. And so through that process and learning about what coaching is and how we do it and what coaches do, I got really curious and I felt like, okay, this is definitely my next step. And that's how the business came into being. I started being curious about how can I do this as a business owner? Is there a way for coaches to be kind of, you know, independent and not just part of bigger agencies or bigger groups? And that's kind of my transition into solopreneurship. 

 Rose | 03:56
Wonderful. What a great journey. I like that. It's... And sometimes these things come easily to people and sometimes, you know, they sort of pushed into it a little bit and, you know, and they find themselves sort of just stuck in there. And, you know, even though they love what they're doing, it wasn't a natural progression for them. 

 Snezana | 04:17
Right. Yeah, I would say for me, it was very, it wasn't that obvious, you know, from the beginning. But as I started learning and growing and developing in different areas, it just came like, it was more, okay, what's my next step? 

 And then things started emerging. You know how talking about growth mindset, when you're focused on something, you suddenly start seeing different paths and different opportunities. 
 So I think that was my case and leadership development as on the training aspect. Yeah. It came very naturally to me as a teacher, you're trained to teach others. And so that's always been a part of my passion. I always wanted to teach regardless of school setting or just whatever setting it is. But it was always that desire of transferring knowledge and helping people grow and see that they can do it, they can learn it. It may take different approach or different length of time. But you can do it. You just need to believe first and foremost that you can. 
 And then, of course, do a little bit of work to get there. 

 Rose | 05:20
Yeah, that's a great point. And as business owners, we need to actually trust our abilities to move forward and to grow within our business because, you know, we wear all these hats and especially in the beginning, you know, when we're just starting and starting. We don't have the resources to outsource a lot of the tasks that we do. 
 So, you know, how can we build this growth mindset? When it's, Quite challenging in the beginning. 

 Snezana | 05:50
It is. It is. And I can completely resonate with that. When I started, it was really hard for me to find other coaches who've been independent, so like not part of a bigger organization. And so it was hard for me to understand, you know, how do you start this business and how do you go about it? How do you find clients? How do you set your pricing? What is the standard? Because if you look at... I work internationally, so I have clients from all over. What is my standard? And so even starting with these very basic and simple questions, you get stuck, not to mention if you have a team or you're developing a product or you're a bigger corporation. Lots and lots of challenges come with that. How do we develop growth mindset? 
 Well, let me just kind of backtrack a little bit and just share very briefly for those who may not be familiar with it, what growth mindset really is. So it came, a psychologist, Carol Dweck, developed this concept and she posed this dichotomy of growth mindset versus fixed mindset. And so she said, people with growth mindset have this belief that our intelligence and our abilities can develop with time. We just need to put in work. And of course, we need to understand how we learn so that we can grow. But we can change, especially when it comes to our abilities and intelligence. Whereas people with fixed mindset have, I guess, the opposite view, which is I am the way I am. Things are the way things are. And there's nothing that I can do to change that. It's just the way it is. And so when we look at Having growth mindset, we need to be mindful of the fact that it's not you either have it or you don't have it. It's more about different areas. 
 So in some areas, we can believe that we're very growth mindset oriented. So for example, I believe that I can learn any language because of my linguistics background, right? There are some people who would say, I'm not good at languages, I just can't speak another language for, you know, whatever. 
 So that's a fixed mindset, for example. How do you know? Have you tried? Maybe you have tried and maybe you've failed, but that doesn't mean that in general you lack the ability to learn. Maybe just you didn't learn it the right way. 
 So that's in a nutshell about growth mindset. And so as entrepreneurs, as business owners, the way we go about it is first and foremost, we recognize what are some of the aspects, what are some of the areas of ourselves, our personal lives, and then our professional lives, our business, where we think, this is easy. I can learn this very quickly. I'm good at this. I've always been good at this. 
 So that's where you have growth. That's where you believe that you can learn and develop and grow. But then I'm certain there are areas where you would be like, I can't do that. It's not for me. For example, I have a couple of clients who absolutely believe they're not good with money. And so we're working on changing that mindset. 
 So that's the start. The start is recognizing and being aware where you believe that you can do things that you can grow, you can learn, you can develop. And what are some of the areas where you feel like no matter what I do, nothing will change? And so the places where you do believe you can grow, you focus on those and push through, of course, because you have that faith already that you can do it. 
 And then from time to time, you want to pay attention to those places where you feel like you're not. That it's the way it is. Why? Because it's limiting us, especially as you said, you know, in the beginning, we wear so many hats, there's so many things that we need to do before we're able to hire help. And so for example, for a very long time, I believe they wasn't good in sales. And, you know, as a coach, I have to sell myself. There's no other way to go about it. 
 So with my belief that, yeah, but, you know, because... I realized that in my mind, selling was the stereotypical car salesman, right? And I never wanted to be this pushy person, especially for coaching, because coaching is supposed to be about your growth. I'm not supposed to push you into growth. Working with me. But then I, when I noticed that that's kind of an impediment on my end, because I'm blocking myself from growth, then I started looking at it from a different perspective. 
 So I started asking questions like, well, why do I believe that? Have I done it before and it didn't work? Or have I tried it at all? If it didn't work, why did it not work? And so I started really exploring that aspect. 
 And then I realized first, That was the picture that I created for myself and I didn't want that. Once I redefined and I said, look, selling is really you telling people who you are, what you do, and why that's good for them, but it's up to them to decide whether they want to go about it or not. And with that, I think that's where my growths, start but that's where that belief started changing. And so from there, I started setting small steps on how I can go about it, you know, I started thinking, okay, if I'm going to have a sales call, what would that look like? 
 And then eventually, I came to a point where it was really mostly me asking people questions, rather than them asking questions, getting things from me. But then I realized, you know, that's the way I can learn about my potential client. And I can see Answer their questions, but it really ended up being kind of like a mini coaching session where they get to see what it feels like. And that was my sales approach. But, you know, so just giving an example to see how and we can all take it. From the things where we believe we need to do something and change in our business or as a business owner and go from there. 
 So long story short, the first step is acknowledge, recognize, And then the next step is see where and what you want to change and in an ideal case scenario, what that would look like. And then start really questioning yourself about your previous experiences. If there were some, how did it go? If it was a negative experience, why? What has changed? Because maybe, you know, you tried this. 10 years ago, and you're a completely different person now. 
 So it may be completely different. And then there's that powerful word that's very connected to growth mindset that's yet. 
 So I'm not there yet. I don't know this yet. I'm not good at selling yet. Or I'm not, I can't grow my business to, I don't know, six figures yet. But that yet. What it does is it tells us it's not definite. It's not finite. It means that right now in this moment, you don't have the ability, not that you will never, ever acquire it. 
 So I'm going to stop talking here and give you, how does this sound to you? 

 Rose | 13:03
Fascinating. It's really fascinating. And I really love your take on the growth mindset. And I love the word yet because it, You're right. It doesn't mean that it's the final step. It's just that you haven't learned something and that you will be you know, using your brain, using your mind, using the skills that you already possess, your abilities to move on to the next step. Or to the next stage in your growth. And so I totally understand everything that you said. And I really appreciate your take on it because it's one of the best explanations I've had. On this podcast about growth mindset. 
 So thank you so much for sharing that. Now, I wanted to ask you about As business owners, how do we, and I know you've explained a little bit about it, but how do we actually develop? This growth mindset to make sure that, you know, we are going from the beginning and we just keep on growing and growing our business. 

 Snezana | 14:02
- There are two, in my personal opinion, two core... Skills that are connected to growth mindset. One is resilience and the other one is a desire to learn or the ability to learn. 
 So I always say, you know, if there's one thing you can trust, when it comes to yourself is trust your ability to learn. We're all capable of learning. And if you don't believe it, just go back to when you were a baby and you started talking, walking, eating. All of these things have been learned through time. 
 So if you don't trust that ability, just remember how you came to be who you are right now. But these are the two main skills that I would focus on. Resilience, meaning... Your response to setbacks. 
 So your adaptability to respond and change and be flexible when things are not going your way or when challenges come or when you're in an uncertain situation. So usually, you know, we get that kind of fight or flight mode or paralyze, but resilience is okay. 
 Something challenging is happening or an unexpected situation came up, My response to that can be, I don't know what to do. And I just freeze. I'm not good to run a business and I walk away. Or it can be, okay, what am I learning from this? What is this situation telling me? What are some of my previous experiences, skills, knowledge that I can use to navigate this situation? What do I need to change about myself, maybe my business? 
 So that works. So developing resilience, it takes time. It's not something that you acquire over time, you know, overnight, but it's one step at a time, meaning maybe today your response to challenge is you just take a day off and you walk away because that's the only thing you know how to do. Okay. Again, acknowledge it. Be aware of how you respond to situations right now. 
 And then the first step is, asking yourself, why do I react this way? What is it about these triggers? That make me react a certain way. 
 And then from there you go, okay, how can I change this? Is there anything that I can do to maybe next time react in a different way? 
 And then the most important part is to visualize. So you look at the, for example, the situation that happened. 
 And then you think, okay, well, I could have done it this or that way. Great. Imagine how you could have done it differently. But the reason I'm focusing on visualizing is because our brain can't really tell the difference between fiction and reality, meaning if something is happening in real time or not. 
 That's why we're scared of scary movies, even though we know nothing is happening to us. But we want to use that, I guess, flaw of our brain to our advantage because then I can create an image in my mind. That has a situation the way I would have wanted it to develop. And so next time I'm in a similar situation, my brain already has two options. 
 So it can go to my kind of the standard so far, or it can pull out that image that I gave it when I was rerunning the situation. And so the more we can imagine this different outcome. The easier it's going to be for the brain to start reacting in a different way. 
 So that's one thing that developing that resilience, learning to adapt, learning to change, learning to face uncertainty. As best as you can. It's never going to be ideal. You're never going to be like, all right, I'm going to take the weight of the world and go with it. No. But even if you get better 1% at a time, that's still improvement. It's still growth. 
 So what you're doing through there and how that's connected to growth mindset is you're growing. You're learning about your abilities, yourself, how you react, and you're adapting and you're changing. The other skill is the ability to learn. 
 So we always need to focus, especially as business owners, on learning. You don't have to know necessarily how to manage every single aspect of the business. But at least initially, if you're a solopreneur, You need to have some basic understanding, you know, how do I do my taxes? How do I sell this product? How do I talk to my customers? How do I maybe start marketing? Hiring someone? Where's the moment? When is the moment? Where's the point where I start thinking, okay, maybe I need help. And how do I get that help? 
 So, you know, we all go into business with some of our strengths. You know, it can be your expertise. You're an expert in the field. 
 You know exactly how this thing works, but maybe you need someone to develop it or maybe you need someone to sell it. You can't afford someone to sell it right now. Okay. Okay. Why would I buy this product? How would I go about this? Maybe let's try and have some conversations and see if these people are interested. 
 And then I learn from there. But so we need to learn a little bit of the basics until we are able to. To start hiring help or just contracting for help. But learning, and then of course, you know, for me as a coach, I have, well, I have mandatory educations that I have to take, but then I love learning. 
 So, you know, I love learning new approaches to coaching because it helps me be a better coach, learning from other coaches, because we all have our own perspectives and methods and ways to go about it. So. 
 You know, being open to that world of, but I guess one piece of advice here is we can always learn. You need to know where to stop. 
 So there's going to be a point. My suggestion is always, if you apply... Everything that you learn you can learn as much as you want. But that gives us a point of, okay, I need to learn. If I learn one skill, I need to now start applying it. 
 So it'll take a little bit of time. So that way we kind of stop ourselves from overwhelming ourselves with all new courses, skills, you know, everything we need to know. And we take it one step at a time. 

 Rose | 20:18
Absolutely. 

 Snezana | 20:18
Rose, does that give you, did I answer that question? 

 Rose | 20:22
Yes, absolutely. And I think, you know, one step at a time is the way we need to go. And, you know, and you're quite right. You learn one skill, you put that into practice, then you go and learn another skill and put that into practice. 
 And then by the end of, you know... The training course or the whatever it is program that you're undertaking you've learned a whole bunch of them and you know you've you've come out on top really because you've been able to put those skills that you've learned into practice yeah and it's got a business better surely. 

 Snezana | 20:53
Absolutely. One thing that you notice with that is that one skill that you learn may pull some other things along the way that you didn't even think about. 
 So you're absolutely it's not. You know, one, it's not, you acquire one skill, you move one step. Usually it's your acquire one skill. You start applying it a couple of steps. You climb a couple of steps. 
 So growth is not one. It's not never parallel and equal. It's always, you know, we learn one thing and then it gives us abundance of things. 
 And then we learn another thing. And again, it becomes that. And I would add. Reflection is really important for us as business owners. We were so focused, of course, on getting the business going, getting the business growing, which is natural. You want to make sure you're stable financially, mentally, emotionally to be able to move forward. But reflecting on our experiences, on our growth is really important because it gives us an idea of how far we've gone or how much we've changed. And even if you look back a year from today, I'm sure that everybody listening to us today can relate. See Even tiny changes, if not bigger ones. 

 Rose | 22:08
Yeah, and I can, you know... Totally agree with that. In the way that when I first started podcasting four and a half years ago, my interview skills were terrible. And, you know, I mean, I still and a lot, but that's just the way I speak. 
 So, I mean, even if it's natural. When I'm with family and friends, I'll still I'm an I. But The point being is I know that my interview skills in the time that I've been podcasting have improved over time. It's not a skill that came naturally to me. 
 So it's something that I've had to learn. And, you know... Four and a half years of podcasting has put me in a place where I'm comfortable now interviewing people and having discussions with them. And in four and a half years, I've learned so much from so many different people because they're sharing their skills, their knowledge with me. I'm almost a walking textbook now. 

 Snezana | 23:04
Yeah. I can imagine that having talked to so many people from different fields, different industries. I wanted to add, probably your listening and conversational skills have changed too, because you've learned how to ask better questions. And of course you get more comfortable with the setting. 
 So that's, it's a huge benefit. 

 Rose | 23:25
Absolutely. Even if I can't get the name right, I still can get the topic right.

 
 Snezana | 23:31
Here's a fun fact for you. My name means Snow White, like the name of the princess. 

 Rose | 23:36
Lovely. Thank you. 

 Snezana | 23:37
But usually people. 

 Rose | 23:39
Remember about that. On any of the social platforms. You can find her on LinkedIn. And I will share these in the show notes. You can find her in snowation.com. And she's offering some one-on-one coaching. Tell me a little bit about what people can expect from you. 

 Snezana | 23:58
Yeah. So if you're interested in one-on-one coaching, It depends on what your needs are. Right now, I'm currently mostly working with business owners, decision makers, managers who want to improve in one aspect, whatever that aspect is. Not only one, but like in some aspect of their growth. 
 So it can be you're a business owner and you're stuck and you're not sure where to take your business next. So that's, what we can talk about. I can help you know, review the goals. Remember that long-term vision, see what's limiting you from moving forward. It can be a belief, it can be maybe a situation, but so that's something we can work on. If you're just starting your business, then we can talk about, okay, why are you so passionate about the thing that you want to start? Do you have anything ready? How to go about it? 
 So it's really what you're getting is some kind of a support, a listening ear, but like a questioner that comes along the way. So I ask a lot of questions. If you're a manager who's trying to develop your team or grow in your leadership role, then we talk about again, what are some of your challenges? What do you feel? Is a thing that keeps you, holds you back or that holds your team back? 
 And then how do we go about it? So it's a little bit on exploring your personal self, but then I'm very practical as a person. 
 So the coaching is always a little bit practical as well. So we talk about, okay, what are the next steps? How can you put this into practice? What do you need to see? What kind of change do you need to see to be satisfied, to be happy, to feel like, That's the progress that I wanted to make. And we work on it along the way. 
 So what you get really, what people mostly appreciate about one-on-one coaching is that you have, again, accountability partner. You have someone who's going to ask you questions without any holding back. 
 So I'm pretty direct and very open. Of course, making sure that you're comfortable with how we communicate. But, you know, it's a safe space where you can share your concerns, your challenges, and then we work on it together. But the most important thing is that you get value out of it. 
 So you come into coaching with a certain... Desire or wish to do something, to change something, to grow in a certain way. 
 And then we explore. What the best way is, how you would feel most comfortable and how to move forward from there. Most general way how it would go about it. But what I've received mostly as feedback is that people feel really comfortable sharing when they're in coaching with me. And they feel like they're really getting this motivation to untangle things, to grow, to learn. And they're very supportive. 
 Sometimes, you know, all you need is just a sounding board. And a coach can give you that. 
 Plus, you know, we're very impartial because most of the time I don't even know the industries where my clients work. But... What that does is it helps me because then I get very curious. And so I really want to learn about who they are, what they do, why that matters. And for them, that's great because it questions what they've done so far and how they can move forward. 
 So in a nutshell, that's what one-on-one coaching is all about. 

 Rose | 27:27
Wonderful. Yep. 
 Sounds really great. And I think anyone who wants to have some coaching on growth mindset, then please reach out to Snezana. 

Snezana | 27:41
It. Yep, there you go. Yes, please do. I'm more than happy to schedule a call. I always have a free discovery call, which means you and I sit together and we have a conversation about who you are and what your needs are before we move forward, because I feel that it's really important for you to see the person and talk to the person who's potentially going to help you along and decide whether that's a good fit, not just from what you read, but from how you feel as we talk. Okay. 

 Rose | 28:10
Absolutely. No, that's a great point, too, that these free discovery calls are always quite important when you're choosing a new coach. Absolutely. You're right. You need to. Feel the vibe between the two of you to see if it's going to be a good fit or not. 

 Snezana | 28:27
Absolutely. Absolutely. 
 Yeah. So go ahead. 

 Rose | 28:30
Did you have something else you wanted to share with us today? 

 Snezana | 28:33
.. Well, there's one thing I want to leave you with, and I kind of brought it up in our conversation, but I really want to encourage you to trust your ability to learn and grow. We're, by nature, beings and creatures who are meant to grow and change. 
 So every time you face a setback, every time it feels like it's the end of the world, this is it, that's it, I'm done. Right. Take a breath, take a step back and then come back to it because I truly believe that if you're a business owner, if you're someone passionate about doing something for somebody else, there's a reason for it. 
 So it may not right now may not feel like it, but just remember how much you've grown so far. So that's something I want to leave with. 

 Rose | 29:23
Great advice too, I think. Snezana, it's been an absolute pleasure. Really endured our conversation and learning about it and your take on it was Yeah, it was really easy to digest and, yeah, really understandable. I really enjoyed that. 

 Snezana | 29:41
Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm so glad to hear that. It's always good to know. And, you know, I try to make things simple because in my education, I've learned if you can't explain it to a five-year-old, you don't understand it. 
 So I try to be really simple with language sometimes, not because people are not intelligent enough to understand, but because sometimes we just really need, you know, in plain English, what does that mean? And how do I go about it? 
 So thank you. I really appreciate that. 

 Rose | 30:08
Thank you so much for joining me. I loved that conversation. 

 Snezana | 30:11
Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. Have a lovely rest of your day. 

 Rose | 30:15
You too. Bye. 

 Snezana | 30:16
Bye. 

 Voiceover | 30:18
You've been listening to Talking With The Experts, hosted by Rose Davidson. Make sure you have a look at our back catalogue over at TalkingWithTheExperts.com. And be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don't miss out on any episode. We look forward to your company next time.