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Entrepreneur's Creed:Your Northstar for Growth
8 Plays2 months ago
What if the most powerful tool for growth isn’t a strategy, a KPI dashboard, or a five-year plan—but a creed? In this deeply personal episode of Voice of Growth: Mastering the Mind and Market, Manny Teran introduces the concept of a personal and business creed—a living declaration of principles that guides identity, decisions, and behavior over time.
Manny shares how he developed his personal creed, Polaris, during one of the most challenging periods of his life, and how a similar creed helped shape the culture and performance of his company.
Unlike goals, which are often outcomes, a creed operates at the identity level—the “song you whistle” while becoming who you are meant to be. Manny connects this framework to Stoic virtues, The Four Agreements, James Clear’s identity-based habits, and real leadership moments where clarity, safety, integrity, and meaning made the difference between failure and momentum.
- This episode challenges listeners to step back from tactics and ask deeper questions:
- Who am I becoming?
- What principles do I refuse to compromise?
- What does growth actually mean to me?
If you’re building a company, leading people, or navigating personal change, this episode offers a practical and philosophical framework for sustained growth—starting from the inside out.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:04
Speaker
The Voice of Growth, Mastering the Mind and Market. Welcome back to the Voice of Growth podcast, Mastering the Mind and Market. My name is Manny Turan, and I'm your host.
What is a Creed?
00:00:15
Speaker
On today's podcast, we're talking about the importance of creating a creed for yourself and for your business. Why the word creed? Don't we have mission statements and vision statements and so forth?
00:00:29
Speaker
Of course we do. Don't we set goals for ourselves? Of course we do. but there's some really important distinctions that I want to talk about why the word creed is the choice that I chose for myself and for my businesses.
00:00:44
Speaker
If you look in the dictionary, the word creed is a declaration or statement of religious beliefs. Certainly, your life is not a religion, and unless you're in the ministry, neither is your business.
The Role of Creed in Identity
00:00:56
Speaker
But I want you to think about this document, the set of principles therein, as a declaration just with the same fervor and the same level of faith that someone might ascribe to the religion.
00:01:12
Speaker
I want you to do the same for yourself and for your business. A creed is really two things. It's a representation of who you already are, and it's a represention representation of an aspirational who you are as well.
00:01:32
Speaker
So it it's not necessarily goals, and we've talked about goals in the past, how although they're noble to set, they're almost impossible to reach. James Clear, Atomic Habits, great book, talks about habits and systems in order to change your identity of the kind of person you want to be in order to accomplish the quote unquote goals. So the goal is more the consequence than necessarily the the destination.
00:02:03
Speaker
And in that framework, you can think about a creed is the song you're whistling as you're on your way to changing your identity. So it's kind of identity, but it's also aspirational.
Creating a Personal Creed
00:02:16
Speaker
I created a creed for myself during a time in my like my life when I was going through a lot. I had stuff at home. I had, my business was in shambles. ah My health wasn't doing well. i It was not a good time for me. And i I really created, I sat down and I mapped out this creed of the kind of person that I wanted to be.
00:02:39
Speaker
But as I was doing it, it was more of uncovering the kind of person that I already was. And there was like weeds and stuff around it. So i was really wanting to be very clear of this is the kind of principles I want to live my life by.
00:02:55
Speaker
And I also did the same for my business, which is interesting because I had done it years prior to my personal creed. And this was even predating my Stoke journey.
00:03:07
Speaker
And when I look back at both the company creed and my personal creed, there's lots of elements of the stoic journey.
Vulnerability and Leadership
00:03:16
Speaker
So I went back recently and made some slight adjustments, but it's pretty much the same on both levels.
00:03:23
Speaker
I also want to note something about vulnerability and about authenticity. I firmly believe that vulnerability and authenticity are a powerful move.
00:03:39
Speaker
It might sound contraindicating that you are sharing things about yourself, personal things that that so that will somehow make you feel ah weak to others, but in fact, it's the opposite.
Introducing 'Polaris' Creed
00:03:52
Speaker
When people see you standing strong, when people see you leveraging and and creating momentum and leading teams and making all these moves, And at the same time, being vulnerable and authentic about the struggles you might have been through or are going through, it takes that initial position and stance and elevates it.
00:04:13
Speaker
I've seen it play out day in, day out. I've seen it um with people that initially were very guarded and held everything close to the chest and then became to open up and their world changed automatically.
00:04:27
Speaker
Now, I'm not necessarily saying that you need to stand up and share all your business secrets or your your tactics or strategy. No, no, no. This is more about your personal journey. And you don't have to go in and talk about individual little stories or even name names.
00:04:40
Speaker
But generally, it's important to share with the world the kind of things that you've been through so that they understand where you're coming from and they their trust is built in a much more quick manner by doing so.
00:04:56
Speaker
I've seen it many, many times. So I'm going to start off with talking about my personal creed, and then I'm going to go through and and discuss the the business side. The personal creed I called Polaris.
00:05:09
Speaker
Polaris, in case you don't know, is the North Star. The North Star is an interesting star in that it's nothing special about this star. Only the fact that the constellations, the way the earth is positioned, all spin around this one star.
00:05:23
Speaker
And that for millennia has been a source of direction for many people, that navigation. And I've always been of... sort of um geared or led towards the idea of Polaris.
Principles of Polaris
00:05:40
Speaker
Polaris will not give you the you know every placement of your foot or you're to traverse this valley or go over this mountain or whatever, but it's going to give you a general direction of where you want to go.
00:05:54
Speaker
the individual um position to your feet, the trails, the mountains, the streams, all that, that has more to do with strategy and tactics. But generally speaking, Polaris is where you're going towards.
00:06:06
Speaker
All right, Polaris, I live my life by acting on my principles. Number one, support, respect, and enjoy the people I love. To meet people, family, my partner, friends, business community and at large. All these things are so highly important because we are social creatures. We're human beings. We're on this earth to be part of this amazing collection of so many relationships, so many conversations, so many interactions with people that to me, that is central.
00:06:44
Speaker
Also, I've been in situations where I have not supported and not respected and not enjoy the people that I love. So I wanted to make that central to the fact that that really means the most to me in being able to to give that support, to to show the ultimate respect and and really enjoy and spend time with the people I love.
00:07:07
Speaker
ah This incidentally is, yeah, it's on a piece of paper. In this case, it's is a something I keep on my and on my phone, but it's it's more of an embodiment of a living, breathing experience execution or activity than just bits on my phone or ink on a piece of paper.
00:07:25
Speaker
This has to be lived. And this is the way I live. Number two, savor the beauty of life. All too often, we are running the rat race. We're chasing the almighty daughter daughter we are chasing the almighty dollar. We are climbing the corporate ladder and we forget, we miss out on savoring that beauty, the tenderness of life, um the gratitude.
00:07:52
Speaker
I show gratitude every morning. I spend maybe a minute sitting down or laying down as I'm waking up, giving thanks for my my health, my body, my friends, my family, the opportunities that that I have, the fact that i I get to do these things, all that frames up my day so that I'm ready and roaring ready to go out of the gate in the morning.
Living with Love and Integrity
00:08:15
Speaker
And savoring the beauty of life is something that I i need to write into this because If I don't remember to do so, I'll just kind of barrel right through these things without sitting and savoring things.
00:08:30
Speaker
Whether it's a simple cup of coffee in the morning or whether it's sitting in a red light and just basking in um the the sun or looking at people walking across the street or these little precious moments. You can find them all through your day, but you need to set that intention that you, um and it's a way of thinking that you'll take a moment rather than to have all these things processing in your mind, you instead take a moment to just show gratitude and savor the beauty of life
00:09:02
Speaker
If you can, I've talked about this many times, get on in nature. This has to do with stillness. I mentioned earlier how I kind of mapped it. you This predates all my Stoke journey, but a lot of the elements are there and that's one of them right there.
00:09:16
Speaker
Number three, live life with love and integrity. Highly important. To me, love is important. um Love isn't some like weird kumbaya thing that is removed or only belongs in monasteries or in church or, in the bedroom or whatever. No, love for me is a deeper sense of gratitude.
00:09:40
Speaker
And and it's it's a kindness. It's a respect for your fellow man and for your your your business, for yourself. A lot of folks fail to show themselves love.
00:09:52
Speaker
And that's important. And for me, putting it on here was very important. And the word integrity is something else that is very powerful. Integrity is when you give your word, you do everything you can to follow through.
00:10:04
Speaker
And in business, it is highly important, highly important. I've been in situations where I have not shown integrity. um And I've had to you know come back to the table and and fix it. So I do my best today to live it that way with integrity.
00:10:21
Speaker
It isn't perfect. It's a full contact sport, like I've mentioned before. And there's going to be moments where we're going to suffer from certain things. But i write I'm resolved to to make sure that I, whatever loose ends that are still out there in my businesses, to tie up because at the end of the day,
00:10:39
Speaker
we face ourselves in the mirror, we face ourselves in in the darkness. And i I can say today that I live pretty free of that. There are some things I mentioned that i've that I have to still settle from the past, and I will, and I'm working towards it, no doubt.
00:10:55
Speaker
um But these things also take time. Highly they important to remain and live in love and integrity. Number four, impact this world by developing my greatness.
00:11:08
Speaker
All right, that sounds really pompous, doesn't it? Kind of, but in a good way. Impact this world by developing my greatness. The more that I'm able to become a higher version of myself and be a better leader and be a better partner, be a better father, be a better friend, a better son, a better brother, and so forth,
00:11:30
Speaker
the better it is for the other person and the world at large, my community, my business. The idea here is put your mask on before you put your child's mask on.
00:11:43
Speaker
You know, they tell you in the the airplane. I've used this word selfish and there's a negative connotation to the word selfish.
00:11:54
Speaker
But if you really start to peel back the layers, what it what I really mean by that word, and Ayn Rand is is somebody who talked about this, it has to do more with with getting firm footing in your own life so that you have the ability to to do more and to go further and make bigger and greater impact.
Connecting Personal and Business Growth
00:12:13
Speaker
If you are yourself centered, ready to go, ah just like if you're in sports, if you're on the football field and you're flopping around, you can get tackled easily. But if you are set, if your feet are in the right position, if you are ready for that blow, then you're more capable of of getting the ball further and further further and faster down the field.
00:12:37
Speaker
Last one is inspire others to develop their greatness.
00:12:42
Speaker
There's nothing more that gives me pleasure than to develop somebody and see them in their career, in their daily life, grow. Whether it be my my children, whether it be somebody at work or a friend, if I'm able to give back, there's so much power to that that feeds my own soul.
00:13:02
Speaker
um There is this idea that There's no way to not help yourself if you're helping somebody else. To me, that's my Polaris. This is a stack up.
00:13:15
Speaker
And This was in part born from the book, The Four Agreements by Coelho, Paolo. um And the idea there is very similar to some of these. And if you really look at the principles, there's also some courage from the Stoic standpoint. There's temperance from the Stoic standpoint. There's wisdom.
00:13:37
Speaker
um And there's justice. They're all already in there and just kind of my own words, even predating. And I made a few tweaks to make it more aligned with stoicism. And the four agreements really is to be impeccable with your word, to not take things personally, which very stoic, of course, um to not make assumptions and to do your best.
00:14:00
Speaker
Fundamentally, very similar to this Polaris.
Aztera's Company Creed
00:14:03
Speaker
Now, I mentioned earlier that we had done the same thing for my company, Aztera. This was in everybody's office. This was in the main rooms. This was in the conference room. And this was our creed at Aztera.
00:14:17
Speaker
Aztera's creed, number one, dependability. We get things done on time and meet expectations. So this was central to the business we were in. We were an engineering development company. We had mechanical, electrical, software engineers. We worked on projects. Every project was unique.
00:14:36
Speaker
And time and expectations were central. We had to be on time, and we really had to meet expectations. We struggled with, i remember now, we struggled with the word meet.
00:14:49
Speaker
We thought about exceed. The problem with Xceed is at least in our business, because the way that they our customers were doing their business, it was more important that we came in when we said and how we said we would come in.
00:15:06
Speaker
If we were to blow their expectations in the sense of do do more than what they asked for, it might have inadvertently caused them additional work to do.
00:15:17
Speaker
Maybe they had already done that. Maybe they had already prepared for that in with another vendor, within their own company and us coming to the table, it wouldn't have worked. So we decided to meet expectations.
00:15:28
Speaker
Number two, structure and clarity. We have clear goals and have well-defined roles within this group, within the group. Highly they important in the sense I've talked many times in the past, the idea of strengths and developing strengths and talents.
00:15:45
Speaker
um Clear goals, this kind of predates a little bit of the James Clear stuff, but this, I did not change this at all. So the idea here is that when we were to set out to do something, we would do our best to reach that goal and have an understanding of what role everyone would play in this company.
00:16:06
Speaker
Number three, meaning. Our work has personal significance to each of us. The beauty of having this company and creating it um with my own my own thinking, my own hands, but then bringing in other hands to the conversation, other people's thinkings,
00:16:29
Speaker
it really created this sense of personal significance. Everybody there enjoyed their job so much. I was so proud in this company that people loved to work there and I'm totally, you know, patting myself on the back.
00:16:48
Speaker
As the the orchestra um um conductor, bringing everybody together, I did not do the work. I did not do the nitty gritty. There's things that happened behind the scenes that I didn't do. And certainly the success of the company was a collective win.
00:17:06
Speaker
i was simply the conductor of bringing people together. Little sidebar, as a CEO, there's only one person to blame when things go south.
00:17:20
Speaker
And that's also the CEO. So give credit to everybody else. And if things go wrong, take all the blame. Kind of a crappy situation to be in, but I love it and I wouldn't change anything about it.
00:17:35
Speaker
Obviously, I'm being a little bit more open here with this, saying that the the meaning for us was really... something out of this world. I'm very proud to have have created this for so many people and given back to the community.
00:17:49
Speaker
And of course, even more so got so much more from the community and from the employees and team members. Number four, impact. We believe our work is purposeful and positively impacts the greater good.
00:18:03
Speaker
Every time we delivered a product, every time we delivered a project, every time we brought our clients in whether it was a high five situation or a more stern conversation, our work was meant something to our clients and to the world at large.
00:18:21
Speaker
We might've been doing a circuit for something that went into a medical device. We might've been doing a bracket that fed into some industrial application that was um feeding people or whatever. There's all these elements of our business that we ascribe meaning and significance to, and it positives have positively impacted the greater good.
Encouragement for Personal Creeds
00:18:44
Speaker
And number five, safety. This is very clear. It's not what you think necessarily. The personal safety, the you know don't get hurt at work.
00:18:56
Speaker
That's a separate thing. This is different. Number five, safety. We are free to speak up without fear of seeming incompetent or being judged in an effort of forward progress.
00:19:13
Speaker
I would say that that one was likely the one that had the most power. There's a few times where we had to bring that to bear we because um it was important that our employees could say what they were thinking without fear of retribution from anybody.
00:19:31
Speaker
On many times, that safety feature saved our butts. People saying, well, I don't really understand this. Can you please go back to the beginning? Rather than the the collective, oh man, or whatever, grumbling,
00:19:44
Speaker
Because this was so important to us, we spent the time to go through, discuss it, whatever level, whatever speed, so that everybody understood. And that saved our hind end a number of times because that person then said, well, what about this?
00:19:59
Speaker
That took the project in a completely different direction. There was occasions where employees started to admonish the other person and and sort of stir the pie. And we had to step in and say, uh-uh, number five, safety.
00:20:12
Speaker
That's exactly why we kept this on in the conference room and the other rooms and in our in our building because it had to be there. And these are ours. These aren't yours.
00:20:23
Speaker
The Polaris is mine. That's not yours. Create the ones for yourself. Spend time journaling. In this day and age, you can ask JetGPT if you want, but make sure it's in your own voice. Make sure it's something that really is powerful to you.
00:20:41
Speaker
And if you take anything from today, it doesn't mean that you have to have some polished thing on the wall or something that is burned into your screen on your phone. But really, what does it mean to live in your skin? What does it mean to do what you're doing?
00:20:56
Speaker
And above and beyond of what does it mean? What is the meaning of it to you? Why is it important to you?
Reflecting on the Impact of Creeds
00:21:07
Speaker
I have done a lot in my life and with all hopes and all prayers, I hope I continue to do so in the future for a long, long time.
00:21:19
Speaker
But what I can say is that the personal creed and the business creed for me were a pivotal data point that I can mark on my life's calendar that has shown so much fruit.
00:21:36
Speaker
by remembering and by setting that operating system and feeding into the identity that I've created and am creating for myself. Thankful that I've found stoicism as an additional knowledge base to draw from because there is so much more that I can do under the framework of my Polaris And through the course of time, I'll be able to make additional adjustments or maybe I'll i'll do a completely new one if I feel it's necessary as I start to grow and develop my own greatness.
00:22:14
Speaker
I challenge you to spend time even for 10 minutes after you're listening to this podcast. if Even for that, spend time a few minutes thinking about what's important to you.
00:22:26
Speaker
What is your why? Simon Sinek, we can go into an entire podcast about the why and why it's important to understand your why. The creed for me are the elements of my why, maybe a little bit different format than what Sinek put forth, but certainly it's something that I adhere to and I ask you to maybe consider doing the same.
00:22:55
Speaker
Thanks for your time. Appreciate it. Cheers.