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0:59

After about six months, I started hearing this voice

1:01

inside. This isn't who you are. This isn't

1:03

what you're meant to do. This isn't what you're supposed to be. I

1:05

remember being at work and

1:08

starting to feel sick, like physically

1:10

ill. I made a beeline to the nearest church

1:12

and I sat on the steps and I cried

1:15

my eyes out because I felt like such a loser.

1:17

I felt like I was doing good by my family.

1:20

But

1:20

at the same time, the truth was I was

1:22

miserable and I felt like I was dying a slow death. When

1:26

the divorce finally came final one day, when like the papers were

1:28

done, I remember watching my mom in the kitchen

1:31

and she's on the phone crying to her mother, my

1:34

grandmother, who was in Florida. And she's like, I have nothing. I

1:36

have nothing. Do you understand

1:38

that? I have nothing. And then she hung up the phone and

1:40

she put her hands on

1:43

my shoulders and her forehead was next to

1:45

mine and she shook me. She said, What is up,

1:47

young and profiteers? You're listening to YAP, Young

1:52

and Profiting podcast, where we interview the brightest minds

1:54

in the world. world

2:00

and unpack their wisdom into actionable

2:02

advice that you can use in your daily

2:04

life. I'm your host, Hala Taha.

2:07

Thanks for tuning in and get ready to listen,

2:10

learn, and profit.

2:24

Welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast, Marie.

2:27

Thank you so much for having me. I am super

2:29

excited for today's show, Young and Profitors. We

2:31

have one of my role models on the show today,

2:33

Marie Forleo. Marie

2:35

is an entrepreneur. She's also the host of the award-winning

2:38

show MarieTV and the Marie Forleo

2:40

podcast. She's an author and a speaker

2:42

that Oprah named as a thought leader for the next

2:45

generation. Marie helps people build

2:47

the life that they want and achieve their dreams. In

2:49

this episode, Marie will share the backstory of

2:51

her becoming a multi-passionate entrepreneur.

2:54

We'll talk about why everything is figureoutable,

2:57

how we can overcome self-limiting beliefs, and

2:59

how we can live a more productive and stress-free

3:02

life.

3:02

So, Marie, I'd love to take it back to your childhood.

3:05

I like to do that on my podcast.

3:07

And from my research, I found out that you have essentially

3:09

always been a Jill of all trades

3:12

since you were a little girl. So can

3:14

you tell us more about that little girl who later

3:16

became what you call a multi-passionate entrepreneur?

3:19

Yeah, I grew up in New Jersey like

3:21

you did. I remember distinctly

3:24

as a kid, you know, when adults

3:26

would say, hey, what do you want to be when you grow

3:28

up?

3:28

I never had one answer. I always had

3:30

like 17.

3:32

I want to be a teacher. I want to be a dancer.

3:34

I want to be a writer. I want to be a businesswoman.

3:37

I want to be a model. I want to be an artist. It was

3:39

just like on and on and on. And

3:41

as the years went on, some of those

3:43

answers would change, but there was never

3:46

just one answer. And I didn't

3:48

realize that that was even odd or

3:50

different until really

3:52

my college years. I remember a lot of

3:54

people seem to have a very distinct

3:57

definitive vision for what they wanted

3:59

to do. I want to be a doctor or I

4:01

want to be a lawyer or I want to be whatever

4:03

it was. And I still had like 15 things

4:06

that sounded really intriguing to me.

4:08

And when I started

4:10

my career after graduating, I went to Seton Hall

4:12

University in South Orange, New Jersey. My

4:14

first job was actually on Wall Street on the floor of

4:16

the New York Stock Exchange. And I was pumped.

4:19

I was so excited because it's like the

4:21

financial mecca of the universe. Back in

4:23

those days, this is like the late

4:25

90s. There were actually no chairs

4:28

on the floor. And I'm a person who has a lot of energy. So I was

4:30

like, oh, this is so cool. I'm going to be running around

4:32

all day. This is amazing. And

4:35

after about six months into that job, I was super

4:37

grateful

4:38

for the work because I'm the first in my family

4:40

to go to college. And my parents, they

4:42

just busted their buns to be able to even

4:45

give me an education. And I took that very,

4:47

very seriously.

4:48

But after about six months, I started hearing this voice

4:51

inside that said, you know, this isn't who

4:53

you are. This isn't what you're meant to do. This isn't what you're

4:55

supposed to be. And I was like, that's strange.

4:57

You know, like, and I tried to kind of push

4:59

that voice away, but it kept getting louder and louder

5:02

and louder until one day I remember

5:05

being at work and starting to feel

5:07

sick, like physically ill,

5:09

started to feel dizzy, like I couldn't really

5:11

breathe.

5:12

And I said to my boss, I said, hey, can

5:14

I just run out and get a coffee real fast? It was at

5:16

a kind of slower time during the days, like, yeah, no

5:18

problem. So I left and

5:20

I didn't go to get coffee. I made a beeline

5:22

to the nearest church and I sat

5:25

on the steps and I cried. I cried

5:27

my eyes out because I felt like such a loser

5:29

because I knew logically and intellectually

5:32

that I was so I was so

5:34

grateful to have work, which included a steady

5:36

paycheck. It included health benefits.

5:39

I felt like I was doing good by my family. But

5:41

at the same time,

5:42

the truth was I was miserable and I felt like I was dying

5:45

a slow death and I didn't know

5:47

how to reconcile those two things.

5:49

The first signal I got from above was

5:51

actually it said, call your dad.

5:53

And back in those days, I still had

5:56

it was like flip phone days. So I took the

5:58

flip phone out of my like

5:59

dark. green jacket. That's what all the traders

6:02

had. And I call my dad and I was crying.

6:04

I was like crying the ugly cry where like there's

6:06

snots coming out of your nose and you just can't

6:09

breathe. And I was like, dad, I'm so sorry.

6:11

I'm a man. And when I finally shut

6:13

up

6:15

and took a breath, he's like, re stop.

6:17

He's

6:17

like, you've been working since you were nine years old.

6:20

I'm not worried about you figuring out how to keep

6:22

a roof over your head. But he's like, here's the secret to life.

6:24

You're going to be working for at least the next 40 or 50

6:27

years. You have got to find something you love.

6:29

And if going to work every day at this place

6:32

makes you this sick that you ran out and

6:34

you're crying in the middle of the day at the church, like

6:36

you can quit. You'll do what you did. You'll

6:38

bartend. You'll figure it out, but you need to find

6:41

something you love.

6:42

And all of that was like such a huge permission slip

6:44

for me because I realized in that moment

6:46

while my dad didn't tell me how to

6:49

find something I loved,

6:51

he gave me permission to do so and

6:53

really reinforce the fact that

6:55

livelihood needs to not

6:57

fully, but

6:58

finding something that genuinely aligns

7:01

with your strengths and your skills is vital

7:03

for all of us. And so the only clues

7:06

I had really was that I was always a super

7:08

creative child. So one of those 17 things that I

7:10

always wanted to be was an artist. So I had this, I

7:12

used to paint and I used to draw. I thought maybe I wanted

7:14

to be an animator for Disney, but I also had a real

7:16

passion around small business. My dad was a small business

7:19

owner. And so I was fascinated with business and money

7:21

and that kind of aspect of life too.

7:23

And so I said to myself, okay, I have these two sides

7:25

of me. What do I do with them? And the first idea that

7:27

came to mind was actually the world of magazine

7:30

publishing.

7:31

There's the ad side, which is

7:33

around money and sales. And then there's the editorial

7:35

side, which is very creative.

7:37

And so I went to a temp agency in New York city

7:39

and I said, I want to work in magazines. I don't care which

7:41

magazine, I don't care where it is. Just get

7:44

me any position. I'll be like

7:46

the lowly assistant. I don't care. And

7:48

so they placed me as an ad

7:50

assistant at Gourmet magazine. It's a part of

7:52

Conde Nast publications back in the day. And

7:54

I remember I was like, Oh, this is awesome. My old

7:56

environment, 99.9% men, this new environment, it was a more

8:00

mixed and balanced. I was like, this is really cool. My

8:02

boss was a woman and then also my big boss, the publisher,

8:04

was also this incredible woman. I

8:06

was like, oh, this is great. I've never seen this before.

8:09

And after about six months

8:11

in that job, the same voice

8:13

came back. It started small like, Marie,

8:15

this isn't who you are. This isn't what you're supposed to do. This isn't what you're

8:17

supposed to be. And I was like, what is going

8:20

on? What's wrong with me? Where's this voice

8:22

coming from? I really want to work. I

8:24

really want to earn money. I really want to contribute,

8:27

but

8:27

I couldn't stand going

8:29

to an office every day. And so logically

8:32

I was like, okay, let me just step back here and try and

8:34

look at my situation objectively. Wall

8:36

Street, money, money, money, ad sales, more

8:39

money, like numbers. Maybe I've

8:41

leaned too heavy into the business side. Maybe

8:43

I've really been starving my creative self.

8:46

So I said, okay. Went to HR and

8:48

said, look, if you have any position at

8:50

any magazine on the editorial side, I'll

8:53

take it. I don't care if I'll take a pay cut. It's a

8:55

lateral move. It's a down move. Just any

8:57

opportunity I'll take it. So they found me a

8:59

position at a

9:00

Madam Mazzel, which was a women's fashion

9:02

magazine editorial side fashion department.

9:05

I was like, oh my God, this has got to be it. I'm

9:07

going to be working with designers. I'm going to be

9:09

seeing new products and be helping with layouts,

9:11

photo shoots. This is amazing.

9:14

And for the first couple of months, it was really cool. It was

9:16

novel. I learned all kinds of new things, different

9:18

environment, amazing. Of course, within,

9:21

I don't know, four or five months, the voices came

9:23

back again. Hala this time, I

9:25

was like, there is something wrong with

9:28

me. I feel broken. Do

9:30

I have some kind of cognitive dysfunction

9:33

where I can't commit to anything? All of my

9:35

friends are getting raises, getting

9:37

married, starting to build their whole

9:39

lives. And here I am years after graduation,

9:42

just wanting to quit my next job.

9:44

Nothing was making sense. And I felt so

9:47

terrified. I felt like such a loser.

9:49

It was awful. And there

9:51

was one day at work when I was on the

9:53

internet and I discovered this

9:56

article and it was about a new profession

9:58

at the time. It's about 1999. The new profession

10:00

was called coaching. You have to get that

10:02

in the late nineties, nobody had heard

10:05

of coaching. Like this was like groundbreaking,

10:07

right? And I remember reading that article and

10:10

it was as though a Christmas tree

10:12

lit up inside of me. It was as though the clouds

10:15

parted and little angels came out and it was like,

10:18

Oh, like this is what you're supposed to do. But

10:20

at the same time, you know, I was 23 years

10:22

old and the mean voice of my head said, what

10:25

are you, are you kidding me? You're 23.

10:27

Who the heck's going to hire a 23 year old life coach?

10:29

You haven't even lived life yet. You're

10:32

in piles and piles of debt. You can't seem

10:34

to hold down a job. This is going to be one more thing you fail

10:36

at.

10:37

So I had that going on, but I couldn't

10:39

deny that in my body

10:41

and my intuition told me that there was something

10:44

there that I was meant to follow.

10:46

And I signed up on the spot for a three

10:49

year coach training program. I was doing

10:51

that at night on the weekends, kept my magazine

10:53

job during the day. And then I get

10:55

a call from the HR department and

10:57

they had a promotion for me to

10:59

go move up bigger paycheck, better position

11:02

to be a part of Vogue magazine. Arguably

11:04

one of the top fashion magazines in the world. And that

11:07

was my fork in the road. Do I stay

11:09

on the safe path with the paycheck and

11:11

the health benefits and like a career that people

11:13

actually understand what the hell it is, or do I

11:15

quit and do this weird ass life coaching

11:17

thing that no one has ever heard of? I have

11:19

no idea how to even turn it into a business.

11:22

And it sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud.

11:24

So I chose that path. I

11:27

came up my job and I went back to bartending

11:29

and waiting tables, which I did all throughout college, and

11:32

I figured out how to build a coaching practice during the

11:34

day. So that's kind of the through line

11:36

of being a multi-passionate kid,

11:39

not knowing what that was to kind of getting me

11:41

to the place where, you know, and I'll pause because I'm

11:43

sure we have other questions, but we can kind of take it all the way

11:45

through. Yeah.

11:45

I'm going to dig deep on all of that. This

11:48

was such a great overview of your story and it's super

11:50

inspirational. So a question that I have for

11:52

you, let's stick with you being 23 years

11:54

old, deciding

11:55

that you want to be a life coach with basically

11:58

no life experience, right?

11:59

How did you get the confidence and when did you actually

12:02

start getting clients? Did you wait until you were

12:04

done with the program? And how did you

12:06

know you were good at it and like starting

12:08

to build your confidence with it?

12:10

Okay. Signing up for that program

12:12

felt really significant to me because I

12:14

just basically, you know, graduated from school

12:17

just a few years earlier. So I was still in that

12:19

mode of being like, I am a student.

12:21

Like when you want a new skill, you

12:23

go put yourself in an environment to gain those

12:25

skills and capabilities. And everything

12:28

that they taught and all

12:30

of the topics and what we would talk about in terms

12:32

of communication, in terms of supporting

12:35

other people, creating frameworks, understanding

12:37

how to listen and to ask questions. Those

12:39

things felt

12:40

like second nature to me. They

12:43

felt like areas where I was so

12:45

excited to learn as opposed to

12:47

things that

12:48

I went through in college where

12:50

it was like, Oh, you know, I'm rolling my eyes

12:52

to get through every topic. Like there was no resonance

12:54

there. So that was my first clue that I was

12:56

onto something as I really, really enjoyed learning.

12:59

Second, part of my coach training

13:01

was actually that you should not wait to

13:03

get what we called at that time practice

13:05

clients. It was like, Hey, just work with people for

13:08

free. Like that was kind of a part of how

13:10

they told you that you're going to build a business

13:12

and build your confidence was not

13:14

to go out there and like pretend that you're

13:17

further along than you are. But for

13:19

me, it looked like reaching out to every

13:21

single girlfriend that I had. And because

13:24

I was bartending and waiting tables, people would

13:26

always ask me like, Hey, what else do you do? Are

13:28

you an actress? I'm like, no dude, I'm a coach. Like

13:30

I could actually help you reach a goal or set a strategy

13:33

or do this. And so I was just

13:36

absolutely shameless about asking

13:38

people if I could work with them for free. Like

13:40

I just did everything I possibly could. And

13:43

in that process, was

13:45

it uncomfortable? Yeah. But I had failed

13:47

at so many other things. And that was so

13:49

much more painful than actually trying

13:52

to do something that I really believed in that

13:54

it gave me the motivation to just put

13:56

myself out there. And then the worst thing that people could say was

13:58

no. And I was like, that's not that big. of a deal. It

14:01

was through that experience of just

14:03

continuing to work through my fear and my embarrassment.

14:06

And then when I started getting people

14:09

results and how they're like, wow, I feel so much better

14:11

after our conversations. So that started to kind

14:13

of fill the well of like, oh, I could do

14:16

this. Like this is awesome. And

14:18

it didn't happen overnight. It took me a very long

14:20

time, but that's kind of how the process started.

14:23

Yeah.

14:23

The other question that I have is in terms of this dream

14:25

job, like you said, Vogue is like the pinnacle of

14:27

the fashion world, right? Everybody wants to work in

14:29

Vogue, especially back then. It was like such a huge

14:32

deal. And so you were at this fork

14:34

in the road. You had to make a decision to go

14:37

after this risky thing that you had no idea

14:39

how it was going to pan out. Ended up being a

14:42

great decision. What was your thought

14:44

process around that? I know that you have a 10 year test

14:46

that you talk about in terms of making decisions. I'd love

14:48

to hear how you came about making that decision.

14:51

So I didn't realize the 10 year

14:53

test until a few years later, and we'll unpack what that

14:55

concept is and how people can use it. Because I think it's

14:57

actually, it's so helpful for any of us, no

14:59

matter what your age is, no matter what stage of life

15:01

you're in. That decision in terms

15:04

of not saying yes to Vogue was a very

15:06

body led intuition led

15:09

decision. Here's what I mean by that. Because

15:11

I had had that experience on wall street

15:13

where going to the same place every single

15:15

day started making me feel like I was dying a slow

15:18

death. And then I quit that job and got out of

15:20

it. And then I went through a similar thing

15:22

when I was at Gourmet Magazine, where I was like, I

15:24

respected all the people that I worked for. I appreciated

15:27

them. I was grateful to have a job, but I couldn't

15:30

deny that every single day it was like, I

15:32

can't do this for the rest of my life. I don't want

15:34

to climb this corporate ladder. Like what's going

15:36

on? So it was a very visceral feeling.

15:39

And then to have that a third time

15:41

when I was at Mademoiselle and then to have this

15:44

incredible opportunity for

15:46

a promotion come to me and

15:48

everything, every single cell in my

15:51

body was screaming no, I don't

15:53

even feel like it was a decision.

15:55

It was something I had to do.

15:59

question that I think will help everybody understand.

16:02

So there's good fear and bad fear, right? There's

16:04

the fear and you know, you should like

16:06

when I feel fear, I'm like, I gotta do it. I gotta

16:08

just do it. That means I'm gonna grow. I'm gonna learn.

16:10

And that's how I accomplish a lot of the things that I'm scared

16:12

of. I know if I feel fear, I need to just

16:15

do it. It means that I'm gonna grow and it's good

16:17

for me. But then sometimes you feel

16:19

fear and it's like this like, oh,

16:21

this is bad for me. And it's more of

16:23

like an intuition gut, like this must

16:25

be bad for me and you shouldn't do that thing

16:28

even though you're afraid of it. So how

16:30

can we tell if we should do something that we're

16:32

afraid of or if we should actually run

16:34

away from it?

16:35

Yeah, fear versus intuition. It's a big thing.

16:38

My best strategy

16:41

that I've taught to probably hundreds

16:43

of thousands of people at this point

16:44

is a

16:45

really simple thing that anyone can

16:47

do whenever you're faced with an

16:50

possibility, an opportunity, something

16:52

that you're facing where if you said yes, you're like,

16:54

wow, this decision could change my life or this

16:56

opportunity could mean the world to me. And

16:58

I think it's really important for all of us,

17:01

especially when we're starting in

17:03

a new journey or when we're on the early

17:05

part of our career path to recognize

17:08

that our intellect and our ego often

17:10

wants to override our intuition.

17:12

And so let's say that you got invited to

17:14

go speak at a certain event or someone

17:16

wants to make you their business partner or they're

17:19

presenting you with this opportunity that on paper,

17:22

maybe there's a lot of money involved or there's

17:24

a lot of prestige or everyone

17:26

else would be like, what are you nuts? Like, how

17:28

are you saying no to this? But yet

17:30

something inside of you feels like, oh,

17:33

I don't know. So here's what I do. I

17:35

always instruct people whenever you're faced with something like

17:37

that and you don't know if it's like good fear,

17:40

meaning the type of fear that you described,

17:43

it's not like the fear of walking in front of a bus where

17:45

you're going to get killed. We're not talking about that. We're talking about creative

17:47

fear that could keep you small. And how

17:49

do you know if it's like something you should move through

17:51

and say yes, because it's going to be a tremendous

17:54

opportunity for you to develop skills and move up in

17:56

the world or if it's your intuition waving a big

17:58

neon red flag.

17:59

like, don't do this, you're going to F it

18:02

up. It's going to just cost you a million things and it's going

18:04

to take you on the wrong path. You're going to regret it.

18:06

So when you think about whatever the opportunity is, whatever the

18:08

decision is, you close your eyes, you get very,

18:11

very still and you want to get out

18:13

of your head and tap into your body. So if it's helpful,

18:16

make sure you have no technology around. If you need to

18:18

like shake it out, neither go for a walk, go for

18:20

a run, go for a workout, something so you

18:22

can disengage from the nonstop

18:25

chatter of the monkey mind and really start to feel

18:27

in your body. So

18:28

you get really quiet and then you ask yourself,

18:30

does the idea of saying

18:33

yes

18:34

to this opportunity, this deal,

18:36

this possibility,

18:37

make me feel expansive

18:39

or

18:40

contracted? Now here's the

18:42

deal.

18:43

In the nanosecond, when you

18:45

ask yourself that question right after,

18:48

your body has a visceral reaction.

18:51

This is super subtle. So people I think that

18:53

are involved in athletics, if you do any

18:55

type of working out, you're probably going to be able to detect

18:57

this a little easier at first, but everybody can

18:59

do it. And what you're feeling for is

19:02

either a feeling of expansion and what that can

19:05

be experienced as is like maybe your

19:07

body moving forward in space. It's

19:09

almost like you're leaning into the sun. You

19:11

feel your chest lifted.

19:13

There's maybe tingly sensations

19:16

inside, even though maybe it's scary. You're like, whoa,

19:18

there's a ton of excitement or maybe little sparks

19:20

of joy or something that just feels

19:23

like a visceral experience of expansion.

19:25

On the other hand, if you ask yourself like, does the idea

19:27

of saying yes to this opportunity make me feel expansive

19:30

or contracted? You might feel something

19:32

that we could identify as dread. Maybe

19:34

there's a pit in your stomach. Maybe your physical

19:36

body starts to pull back in space or

19:39

your shoulders hunch over or your head starts

19:41

to very subtly say no.

19:44

So if you actually ask yourself

19:46

that question, take a breath and feel

19:48

into the answer, not from your head, but from your

19:51

body, that is one of the surest

19:53

ways that any single person can get

19:55

aligned with their intuition,

19:57

not their intellect. Your intellect will

19:59

often lead you astray because

20:02

it's tied to your ego, which is tied to

20:04

status, prestige, wanting to get

20:06

ahead, climbing, and it's all rooted in fear at

20:08

the end of the day. Your intuition is

20:11

your connection to higher source,

20:13

guidance, wisdom, natural

20:16

knowing, like innate powers

20:18

that all of us have that we're just not taught

20:20

how to access in school.

20:22

And I have to say that as you get more successful,

20:25

these opportunities are going to become sexier and

20:27

sexier and it's going to get harder to say

20:29

no and harder to say no and you need to get really good at

20:31

making these decisions.

20:34

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23:24

I'd love to understand the 10 year test. The 10

23:28

year test. So this was interesting. So after

23:30

I had said no to the magazine world,

23:32

had gone on this journey to like, okay, let me figure

23:34

out how to build a coaching business, bartending

23:37

waiting tables about seven days a week and was doing

23:39

my coaching business during the day. And so

23:41

we all know this. One of the things that

23:43

any one of us needs to do or we learn

23:45

that we have to do is kind of have an elevator

23:48

pitch. Or when someone asks you about your

23:50

business or what you do for your career, you're supposed to

23:52

have a really good answer. And I remember

23:54

at the bar when people would ask me, so like, what else do

23:56

you do? Oftentimes when I

23:58

talked about being a life coach,

23:59

it would feel

24:02

really narrow and limiting and

24:04

like I wasn't telling the full story.

24:06

Even though I really loved what I did,

24:09

the truth was I had all

24:11

of these different other passions as well

24:13

that I was starting to explore. So for example,

24:16

I loved spirituality, I loved writing, I

24:18

loved what at that time, the early

24:20

2000s was the new world of digital

24:22

business. Again, YouTube didn't exist,

24:25

podcast didn't exist yet, it was blogs

24:27

and email and eBooks and like different things

24:29

that were brand new and mind blowing.

24:31

And I also loved hip

24:33

hop

24:34

and dance and music. And even

24:36

though I don't have any formal training, it was like something

24:38

that was such a passion for me.

24:41

And I would go to classes here in New York

24:43

City and I would go to a place called Crunch

24:45

because they had, first of all, I had a gym membership, they

24:48

had amazing dance teachers and amazing

24:50

dance classes and I loved it. And

24:52

I remember just going

24:54

to classes so often going like, wow, I actually

24:56

think this should be a part of my path

24:58

or part of my career, but it doesn't make sense

25:01

because I'm supposed to be focused on life

25:03

coaching, I'm already bartending a waiting table seven nights

25:06

a week, like how am I gonna do all these things? And

25:08

so I remember like having these

25:10

fantasies about being a dancer and

25:13

about having a career in this world,

25:15

but I would always never give myself permission

25:17

to do it because I was like, oh, I'm supposed to focus,

25:20

all the success books say you have to niche down

25:22

and pick one thing and be the best at it in the world so

25:24

they can't ignore you. But the truth was I couldn't

25:26

do that, it was an advice that worked for me. And

25:29

so this opportunity came up to actually

25:31

audition, to teach at

25:33

Crunch and to kind of take my passion

25:36

for this thing to the next level. And I remember

25:38

sitting down and thinking to myself, should I do this?

25:40

Is this like the stupidest thing ever?

25:43

You know what I mean? Am I gonna just get distracted,

25:45

slow down my coaching career, spend even more

25:47

time bartending waiting tables because I'm not making that much money?

25:50

That's when I came up with the 10 year test, I was about 25 or 26 at

25:52

the time. In the dance

25:54

world,

25:55

to start out at 25 or 26, you

25:58

are over the hill.

26:00

You're practically

26:02

a great grandparent because most people

26:05

as professional dancers, they start taking class

26:07

when they're like three or four and they're

26:09

in these recitals and everything and their professional

26:12

dancers going on tour and music videos by

26:14

the time they're like 15, 16, 17, you know what,

26:16

like that's their peak. And then in their mid

26:18

twenties, they're kind of moving into a different zone

26:20

or something like that. Anyway, that was

26:22

my understanding of that world. So to start

26:25

dancing with no formal training at 26

26:27

or 27 sounded crazy. So I sat

26:29

myself down and I said, okay, look, you love

26:31

this thing so much. You love music, you love

26:33

hip hop, you love dance. If you imagine

26:36

yourself, you're 25 right now, if you imagine yourself 10

26:39

years in the future looking back and

26:41

realizing you didn't go for this, you

26:43

didn't actually audition to teach at Crunch, you didn't

26:45

give this any sort of space or

26:48

attention, are you going to regret it? And

26:50

when I closed my eyes and imagined myself at 35,

26:53

10 years into the future, I was like, oh my

26:55

God, it would be one of the biggest regrets

26:57

of my life.

26:59

And that leaning into

27:01

my future and trying on a perspective

27:04

of future me is the 10 year test and

27:06

anyone can do it.

27:07

Now if I would have gotten the answer like, no, I really

27:09

wouldn't give a shit, then I probably wouldn't

27:11

have went on an audition, but I did audition

27:14

and I wound up having this extraordinary

27:17

career simultaneously to building

27:19

my coaching practice where I was one of the world's first elite

27:21

Nike dance athletes. And I got to teach

27:24

hip hop and salsa and house and

27:27

all these different dance flavors

27:29

all around the world. And these incredible

27:32

experiences that would have never happened if

27:34

I didn't do that 10 year test and

27:36

get out of a space of fear thinking

27:39

that it was like too late at 25. And again, I know

27:41

how ridiculous that sounds, but in that world,

27:43

contextually, it made sense.

27:45

I love that. So as I was

27:47

researching about your story, there were some things that I

27:49

realized. So in high school, you

27:51

tried it for the cheerleading team for many years. When

27:54

you finally made the team, you became captain, right? Yeah.

27:57

Then you're the first to go to college, you graduated valedictorian.

28:00

Then as an adult, you just tell the story, you're a

28:02

dancer, no professional training, started

28:04

way later than everybody else. Then you become

28:07

one of the first elite dancers for Nike,

28:09

right? So how do you dominate

28:12

every single random thing that

28:14

you decide to do? It's really a

28:16

personality type. I'm very similar, always president

28:19

of everything, always captain of everything, dabbling

28:21

in this, this, and that, figuring it out. We'll talk about

28:24

that in a little bit. But I just want to understand

28:26

your personality, the personality

28:29

that it takes for somebody to always want to compete

28:31

and win and be number one, which sounds

28:33

like it's very much your personality based on what

28:35

I learned about you.

28:36

What would you say are the pros and cons of this

28:38

type of personality?

28:40

One of them is that I'm willing to dive

28:43

in and not be good at stuff.

28:45

Like

28:45

everything I've ever tried when I

28:47

start out, I'm not good at

28:50

all, like terrible. I remember

28:52

all those times trying out for the cheerleading team

28:54

and just being like so crestfallen because

28:56

I was so rejected. It was like, these arms

28:58

aren't straight and you don't have this and no, no, no. And I was just like,

29:01

all right, I'm going to try better next time. And I just put myself

29:03

on video camera to learn to go, okay, oh wow,

29:05

I see how my arms are. Oh, oh wow. Jesus,

29:07

I'm a mess. Okay, great.

29:09

And I think the same thing with coaching.

29:11

I think the same thing with business. Like I'm not

29:13

super fast.

29:15

So a lot of people, I think in the world,

29:17

sometimes people have these incredible opportunities

29:20

where they're like, they have, I don't know if it's overnight success,

29:22

but they're like fast learners. And I don't

29:24

think I'm like that. I think also one

29:26

of the pros to this type of personality

29:29

is like, if I really love something, I'm

29:31

going to just go for it and dive in and

29:33

trust that it'll all work out. I think one of the cons

29:36

of having personalities like we do is

29:38

you can sometimes be your own worst enemy and you

29:40

can overwork. I think perfectionism

29:43

is something to really watch out for.

29:45

Like there's beautiful perfectionism, which

29:47

means you have high standards and that's awesome

29:49

because that's where excellence comes from. And that

29:51

is outstanding. And then it can bleed

29:54

over into some maladaptive forms

29:56

of it where nothing is ever good enough.

29:59

You're never good enough.

29:59

push yourself into burnout and you can be

30:02

really hard on other people too. So I think those

30:04

are some of the aspects where you have to

30:06

really keep awareness of yourself

30:09

and the self-punishment and the self-torture that

30:11

can come with this personality type is really

30:13

something to keep an eye out for.

30:15

So I want to ask one last question

30:17

about your career. Have you ever heard of the tipping point

30:19

by Malcolm Gladwell? Yes. So

30:22

like basically it's like the boiling point, like you

30:24

reach critical mass and like everybody knows who

30:26

you are. So you are one of my role models

30:28

in this space. When I think of like who I want

30:30

to be and all these things, I always think

30:33

of like you are definitely a name

30:35

that pops up in my mind and

30:37

it was great to have you as a role model before

30:39

I was able to you know be a big podcaster

30:41

and things like that. So thank you. And

30:44

I'm curious to know what

30:46

point in your career like now everybody in this

30:48

space knows your name, you're really

30:50

recognizable. One of the top females in this business

30:53

influencer space, what do you think was the tipping

30:55

point when you're like everything started started to

30:57

really just escalate for you?

31:00

What was the tipping point? It's a great

31:02

question.

31:03

Two things about this. One, I don't

31:05

know if there was one. That's my honest

31:07

assessment and I may not be the best

31:10

person to decide that because I'm so in

31:13

it and if you talk to anyone who knows me, any

31:15

of my friends and colleagues, they'll let you know, even my team.

31:17

I'm the most heads down person ever.

31:20

Like my thing is I just

31:23

show up, I get it done, and then I'm

31:25

either off, meaning I'm completely

31:28

unplugged and kind of into another space

31:30

in my life and then when I come back, I

31:32

go heads down again. So because

31:35

I've been doing this now and it's been 22 years,

31:37

right? So it's a really long time and

31:39

I think going back to the traits, one of my

31:42

best traits is my consistency

31:44

trait. So when I first started

31:47

creating content on a weekly basis, it

31:49

was through a newsletter with the cheesiest title ever called

31:51

magical moments. It was awesome. That was the best I could do at

31:54

that time. And I would send down a newsletter

31:56

every week nonstop. And then actually

31:59

once I got a was the first dog I

32:01

ever had in my life, Kuma, he's 13 now. When

32:03

I got him, I couldn't blog anymore

32:05

because raising a puppy and training a puppy

32:08

takes a lot of time. If anyone listening has ever done

32:10

it, you know it's a lot of work. And I was like, oh, I need

32:12

to just turn on my computer because I remembered from my teaching

32:14

fitness days, I was like, oh, I can easily look at

32:16

a camera. And so then it became MarieTV.

32:19

And I'm saying all this because the consistency

32:22

and the momentum that has built over time,

32:25

there wasn't one moment. I think it's the

32:27

long game that has allowed

32:29

me to create what

32:32

for me has been a really beautiful experience

32:34

of business and a beautiful experience of

32:36

being able to connect with people. There were

32:38

certainly beautiful moments and I hope that there's many

32:41

more, but I don't think that there was one

32:43

that really did it. It was the

32:46

relentlessness of commitment

32:48

and consistency that I think

32:50

has helped me create what we

32:52

have today.

32:53

It's totally amazing. And it's amazing how

32:56

you sort of had it as a side hustle, but it was something you

32:58

were still doing consistently. You had other

33:00

things that were making you money because that thing

33:02

wasn't making you money yet, but you kept going at it,

33:04

getting better at it, learning at it. And it's really,

33:07

all this stuff is a long game. Same thing with me in

33:09

this podcast. I've been working on it for five

33:11

years. People see me now, but it's like, I've

33:13

been doing more than five years. I had a

33:15

blog before this. It's been like a 12 year journey

33:17

to get here, you know? Of all these different

33:20

experiences in the same sort of path,

33:22

even though I was doing other

33:24

things to sustain myself all the

33:26

while, but it's like sticking on one thing

33:28

long-term is super important. So let's talk

33:30

about everything is figure-outable. So you have a book that

33:33

was released in 2019. This is one

33:35

of my favorite quotes. I actually have it in our, yep, I have

33:37

a company. I have it in our core values as one

33:39

of our phrases is everything is figure-outable.

33:42

So what was the genesis of this phrase?

33:45

So this phrase is really, it's the

33:47

mantra I live my life by. I feel

33:49

like if my DNA could be words, that

33:51

would be it. This actually is something

33:54

beautiful. It was such a gift that was

33:56

given to me by my mom. So

33:58

my mom is this really interesting. interesting character.

34:01

She is 75 now. She's still with us.

34:03

She's awesome. She's super spicy

34:05

and funny. She is about

34:08

5'4". She looks like June Cleaver,

34:10

which is this character from the 50s, this like

34:12

leave it to Beaver show, very, very kind

34:15

of pure and all American looking, but

34:17

she has the tenacity of a bulldog and

34:19

she curses like a truck driver. She

34:22

is so spicy. And she

34:24

actually grew up the daughter of two alcoholic

34:26

parents in Newark, New Jersey. She really learned

34:29

by necessity how to stretch a dollar bill around

34:31

the block like five times, super frugal.

34:33

And she had made a promise to herself that when she grew

34:36

up, that somehow she was going to find a way to better life. And

34:38

I remember sitting around our house in New

34:40

Jersey on Sundays and we

34:42

would clip out coupons together because my mom

34:44

was like, I'm going to teach you all the different ways

34:46

that we save money. And the other

34:49

thing that gave her so much joy was

34:51

the fact that brands back

34:53

in the day, I don't even know if they still do this, back

34:55

in the day, when you kind of were

34:57

loyal to a brand, you could cut out what

35:00

was known as a proof of purchase. So those were

35:02

on the back of like cereal boxes or

35:04

milk cartons or orange juice cartons.

35:07

And if you saved up enough of them, you can mail

35:09

them in and they would send you something like a free

35:11

recipe book or a whole set of utensils

35:13

or something like that.

35:15

And one of my mom's

35:16

favorite possessions in the whole world was

35:18

this little AM FM transistor

35:20

radio that she got from Tropicana

35:22

orange juice for free. So this

35:25

little radio looked like an orange and

35:27

had this cute red and white straw sticking out

35:29

of the side. That's the antenna. And

35:31

my mom loves music too. And so I remember

35:33

as a kid, anytime that I needed

35:35

to find my mom, like somewhere around our

35:37

yard or somewhere around the house, all

35:40

I had to do was listen for the sound

35:42

of this tinny little radio of her like

35:44

music blaring out of it. And

35:46

one day I remember walking home from school

35:49

and I'm approaching the house and I hear her tunes.

35:51

It was like a Donna Summer or something. I get

35:54

closer and the music is like coming from

35:56

a strange orientation. It was actually coming

35:58

from way up high.

36:00

I was caught off guard and I look up and I see

36:02

my mom perched precariously

36:05

on the roof of our two-story house.

36:07

I don't see a ladder. I don't see, I just see her

36:10

like perched up there with this little orange

36:12

sitting next to her butt. And I'm like, mom,

36:14

are you okay? What are you doing? Why are you doing

36:16

the roof up there? And she's like, ri, I'm fine.

36:19

Don't worry about it. She's like, the roof had a leak.

36:21

I called the roofer. He said it was going to be at least 500

36:24

bucks. I said, screw that. There's

36:26

some extra asphalt in the garage. I'm doing it myself.

36:29

I was like, okay, cool.

36:32

So another day I come home. I remember walking

36:34

through the door and like I hear like,

36:37

I'm every woman, like in the back

36:39

and my mom's in the bathroom. And I push open

36:41

the door and there's like dust particles

36:43

all over and there's pipe sticking out of

36:45

the wall. Like it looked like a bomb went off. It

36:47

was crazy. I was like, mom, are you okay?

36:50

What's going on? She's like, oh, you know,

36:51

the caulking was off and the tiles were cracked.

36:53

I didn't want the bathroom to get moldy. So

36:56

I'm retiling everything. Now

36:58

you have to get that my mom is just

37:00

high school educated, right? And this is

37:02

the 1980s. So we don't

37:04

have Google. We don't have YouTube. We don't

37:06

have TikTok. Like we don't have any of the things that

37:08

you could look up how to do stuff. And so one

37:11

day it was the fall.

37:13

It was getting dark early and I came home from

37:15

school and it was already like kind of creepy.

37:17

And as I approached my house, something

37:20

was different. No lights on. And

37:22

it was totally silent. And for an Italian American

37:24

home, if it's quiet and dark, this is

37:26

not a good sign. So

37:28

I walk in and I had this pit in my stomach because

37:30

I knew something was off and I'm like, where the hell

37:32

is my mom? Where's the radio? Like

37:35

it's, it's too silent here. Then

37:37

all of a sudden I hear these clicks and clacks like coming

37:40

out of the kitchen. I follow the sound and

37:42

I see my mom hunched over the kitchen

37:45

table. It looked like an operating room. There

37:47

were screwdrivers and like electrical

37:49

tape. And then in about a dozen pieces,

37:51

a completely dismantled Tropicana orange

37:53

radio. I was like, mom,

37:56

what happened? Is it broke? What's your

37:58

favorite thing in the world? She says to me, she's like, oh, I'm sorry.

37:59

Oh no, everything's fine. She's like the antenna

38:02

was off and the dial wasn't working right.

38:04

So I'm just putting it back together.

38:06

And I finally thought to ask the question

38:08

I should have always asked, which was this. I said, hey mom,

38:10

how do you know how to do so

38:12

many things that you have never

38:15

done before? And there's nobody

38:17

showing you how to do it.

38:18

And she put down her screwdriver and she cocked her head to the side.

38:20

She said, Marie, what are you talking about?

38:22

She's like, nothing in life is that

38:24

complicated.

38:25

If you roll up your sleeves, you get in there

38:28

and you do it. Everything is figureoutable.

38:30

And how I kid you not, I was just

38:33

like, everything is figureoutable.

38:35

What? Everything is figureoutable.

38:38

It's like that phrase washed over me and it

38:40

lodged into my heart so deep that it

38:43

became the operating system through

38:45

which I lived honestly the rest of my

38:47

life. It got me through high school and abusive

38:49

relationships and all the BS

38:51

that most of us go through, getting college and education

38:54

and rejection, like all the

38:55

things.

38:56

And there is not a day that goes by

38:58

that I still do not use that phrase

39:01

or that we don't use it in our team and our company or

39:03

in some aspect that it doesn't help

39:05

me when the shiitake hits the fan in life because

39:08

it does for all of us, get myself

39:10

back into a space of going like, let's problem

39:12

solve, let's get creative, who can I call?

39:15

I may not have all the answers. I'm not saying that I

39:17

know how to necessarily figure everything out, but

39:19

that it is figureoutable.

39:22

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39:59

I love that. And I know

40:02

that your mom, she gave you

40:04

this everything-figure-out-able mantra,

40:06

which seemed to work really positive

40:08

for you. She also had a lot to do with your

40:10

money, beliefs, in general. Like you said, she

40:13

was frugal. And I know

40:15

that one time, I heard you tell a story when you

40:17

were eight years old, you saw your mother sobbing

40:19

on the phone, and basically she

40:22

told you something that was advice that you

40:24

took heed to, which was a real big

40:26

benefit in your life, but also led to some

40:29

overdoing it in some ways. So tell

40:31

us about that.

40:32

Yeah. So it was, I was around

40:34

eight when my parents

40:36

got divorced. And so essentially,

40:39

it was never about like drugs

40:43

or infidelity or, you

40:45

know, anything like that. It was, it was always,

40:47

my parents fighting was always about money and

40:49

there not being enough of it. And so when the divorce

40:52

finally came final one day, when like the

40:54

papers were done, I remember watching

40:56

my mom in the kitchen and

40:59

my mom's a little woman and she had probably

41:01

lost, I don't know, 15 to 20 pounds to be

41:03

perfectly honest with you. She was like a skeleton.

41:05

And she, this was back when there was landlines. So

41:07

she had the phone like wrapped around

41:09

her hand and blood was drained

41:11

out of it. And she's on the phone crying to

41:14

her mother, my grandmother who was in Florida. And she's

41:16

like, I have nothing. I have nothing.

41:18

Do you understand that? I have nothing.

41:20

And then she hung up the phone and she

41:22

leaned down, bent down cause I was small and

41:24

she put her hands on my shoulders and her

41:27

forehead was next to mine. And she shook

41:29

me. She said, Marie,

41:31

don't be stupid like I

41:33

was. Do you see what I'm going through right now? Don't

41:36

ever let a man control your money.

41:38

Don't ever let anyone control your destiny.

41:40

Don't be stupid like me. I need you to grow up.

41:42

I need you to be independent. I need you to take care of

41:44

yourself.

41:45

Don't be stupid like I was.

41:47

And I'm not kidding you, Hala. Like I ate, first

41:50

of all, I was terrified because

41:52

I had never seen my mom that distraught.

41:54

Second of all, my dad's an amazing person. So

41:56

I was heartbroken because every

41:59

kid, most. of us, right? We just want our families

42:01

to be together. And so I formed

42:03

this little understanding, this little equation,

42:06

which was this, was that not having

42:09

enough money means that you're going to

42:11

lose love. Not having enough

42:13

money means that families are going to get broken

42:15

up. And not having enough money is a thing that I

42:17

never want. And I promised myself that I was

42:20

going to grow up and somehow figure

42:22

out how to make so much money that

42:24

it would never take away love again. And

42:26

I remember even as a kid hearing other

42:29

stories from other kids I knew because their

42:31

families were getting divorced too. And so I had these

42:34

fantasies of like, oh, well, I'm going

42:36

to earn so much that I can help other people

42:38

with enough money as well. And so

42:40

that was kind of a weird, but strange

42:43

and amazing thing that

42:45

got planted in me that grew

42:48

into a desire, a

42:50

hunger, a commitment to

42:53

be financially free. It definitely

42:56

was not a straight line because like I was sharing

42:58

earlier in this conversation, I got myself

43:00

in piles and piles of debt after school.

43:03

So I was certainly not good at it. I think

43:05

for most of us, there's a lot of mixed messages that

43:07

we absorb around money, whether

43:09

that is from our family, from society,

43:12

our friends, the media, a

43:14

lot of mixed signals about whether we should

43:16

want it. Is it okay to want it? You shouldn't

43:19

have it. Are you spiritual? Are you a good person?

43:21

Like so much stuff that

43:23

most of us need to work through. And, uh, but that

43:25

was the genesis for me of having that seed

43:27

planted of going like, Nope, I don't know how,

43:30

but I'm going to figure out how to earn so much. It's not

43:32

going to be a problem.

43:33

And eventually you figured that out. You started becoming

43:36

really successful, making money.

43:39

And I heard you on Dear Gabby and other podcasts

43:42

where you were talking to her about the fact that

43:44

at one point you were just sort of overdoing

43:47

it. You were a stress ball all the

43:49

time, running around like a chicken with

43:51

your head cut off. Nothing was ever enough.

43:53

You would always

43:54

say like, Oh, rest in two weeks. I'll rest in two weeks.

43:56

I have to say, I feel like I'm in that

43:58

now running a team. of 60 people

44:01

and I feel like I'm just

44:02

three times a week working at till midnight

44:04

still and all these things. I know it's not good

44:06

for me, but I want to understand what

44:08

point was the turning point for you when you're like, I

44:11

need to make a change. Yeah.

44:13

Well, a couple of things. One, should you be

44:15

interested? And again, this is only an invitation,

44:17

but if you're ever like, you know what, I'm kind of

44:19

done with this. Like I still want to be

44:21

wildly successful, but I don't want to drive

44:24

myself into the ground. You need to consider

44:26

coming to do time genius. It's amazing.

44:29

It'll keep all of your best qualities and

44:31

kind of let go, at least for me, of some

44:33

of the ones that have grown to be destructive. So

44:36

for me, probably one of the biggest

44:38

wake up calls was actually

44:41

in 2020 because I had

44:43

been really going at it hard for a while.

44:45

And it was like a fish in water. It's like, I don't know any different.

44:48

This is just me. This is what I do. This is how

44:50

I do it. And there was

44:52

never a problem with it. It certainly wasn't a burden

44:55

because I love my work. And it showed up

44:57

a few times in my relationship where

44:59

with Josh, my partner, we've been together 20 years

45:02

where, you know, he's like, hey, you're working a lot. And I'm

45:04

like, yeah, this is what it takes, dude. Like this

45:06

is what it's about. And so we've definitely had

45:08

sparring issues over time. And I think I

45:10

dialed it down a little bit because the truth

45:12

is my relationship needed more space

45:14

and needed more attention. And if it was going to thrive, but

45:17

in 2020, I started having all

45:19

of these weird and unusual pains

45:22

in my body, which I had never had

45:24

before. And I, you

45:26

know, had always taken really good care of my health and as

45:29

conscious as I can be as a dancer

45:31

and as a fitness person, you know, movement is

45:33

part of my life, but things just started

45:36

to fall apart. And I remember

45:38

getting all of my blood work done and a doctor said

45:41

to me after she reviewed my blood

45:43

work, she's like, Marie, it is a miracle. You're

45:45

able to get up every day. Like your adrenals

45:48

are shot. Then we

45:50

discovered all of these tumors inside

45:52

of me, including one, the size

45:54

of a grapefruit growing outside of my uterus, pushing

45:57

all of the other organs out of place. And it turned out to

45:59

be a miracle.

45:59

Turns out I had to have an urgent hysterectomy

46:02

to make the pain stop.

46:04

And so after that

46:07

surgery, the recovery is like

46:09

you can't really do much for like six to

46:11

eight weeks. It's just like your body needs

46:14

to heal. It's a major surgery. You cannot

46:16

work out. You can walk and you walk gently, but

46:19

you just have to really chill. And I'm

46:21

not kidding you. I have never taken six weeks

46:23

off in my life.

46:25

I started babysitting when I was nine.

46:27

I was like, even just the prospect,

46:29

I remember even when I heard like, no, no, no, you're not going to be

46:31

able to do anything for six weeks. I was like, like,

46:33

it was like such a record scratch moment.

46:35

But what was so cool about that was

46:38

in the stillness and in

46:41

the requirement to just be, I

46:44

was able to see how

46:46

much

46:47

my patterning of drivenness

46:50

had exceeded what was necessary.

46:53

And it was though this drive

46:56

was driving me

46:58

rather than me being in control. And

47:00

there was just layers of it that I

47:02

was like, this is not even productive.

47:05

And I am like really about efficiency and productivity.

47:07

And I'm like overdoing it in certain areas.

47:10

And it's causing my body to break down, which

47:12

is like my sacred vessel in this lifetime.

47:14

Like this is nuts, Marie. You know,

47:16

and you can't see things or learn the lessons

47:18

until they're ready for you. But there was something

47:21

in that stillness that gave me a

47:23

perspective that quite frankly, I just didn't

47:25

have before because I was so,

47:27

it was such a habit to go

47:29

so fast and so hard that

47:31

I didn't know there was even another option.

47:33

Yeah. And you love your job so much when

47:35

you love what you're doing. It's so easy to just

47:37

keep going, keep going, keep going and not even pay

47:40

attention to how your body is reacting and feeling.

47:42

So like you said, you've got this new course,

47:44

newish course called Time Genius. I definitely

47:47

want to take it. You got to come take it. You'll

47:49

love it.

47:49

Yeah. And

47:51

you talk about rejecting the time stress trap.

47:54

Can you explain what that is? In

47:56

my six weeks and so, like I had

47:58

I've always been obsessed with product.

47:59

because again, I love what I do. And I'm always

48:02

like, well, how do we maximize our time on earth?

48:04

Like how do you get the most out of being here, the

48:06

things that you want to create, the impact you want to make, the

48:08

different adventures that you want to have. So it's always been a

48:10

place of interest for me, a place of study.

48:13

And I love studying neuroscience and I love studying

48:15

efficiency and effectiveness and all those beautiful things.

48:18

And when I really started to understand

48:20

that I was so addicted to

48:22

like overwhelm and had put myself

48:25

in a place of burnout, I started to recognize

48:27

that I was like, wait a minute,

48:28

this is like two different worlds, two

48:30

different paradigms where we're so

48:33

inculturated to believe that if we're

48:35

not on our phones 24 seven, if we're not

48:37

constantly engaging and creating content

48:39

and trying to reach for more and more

48:41

and more and bigger and bigger and bigger, that somehow we're

48:44

not hungry enough or we're

48:46

not driven enough. So I started

48:48

understanding, I was like, it basically came to

48:50

me this concept of like, there's the world of time

48:52

stress, which most of the world is caught in. Here's

48:54

a stat that might blow your mind. Did you know that

48:57

on average, right now these days, the

48:59

average American will now spend the equivalent of 44 years

49:02

of their life staring at screens? No,

49:04

I didn't know that.

49:05

44 years of our life. I don't

49:07

know about you. Mine is like 60 years

49:10

for sure. Yes, but I don't think

49:12

the purpose of a human life is to spend 44 years

49:14

or 66 years staring at screens.

49:18

And just when I started to

49:20

really do some research into the stats and

49:22

I started, I actually asked our audience,

49:24

I sent out this survey and

49:26

I just said, hey, I'm investigating this topic.

49:28

I'm curious if you have any struggles around productivity or

49:30

burnout or getting things done or feeling like no

49:32

matter how hard you go, it's never enough. And when

49:35

you're working,

49:35

you're like, oh God, I really need to rest, but you feel

49:37

so guilty for taking rest that you don't take a rest. And

49:40

then when you take a rest, you're like, oh, I should be working because I

49:42

have all these other ideas and I need to get ahead. And

49:44

oh my God, Hollis, you don't even, the responses,

49:47

there was like 7,000 in-depth responses in

49:50

like two days. It was insane.

49:53

And then when I started to look at those responses,

49:55

it became so apparent to me that most

49:57

of the world was caught trapped.

49:59

in this awful paradigm that I called

50:02

time stress, where you feel like no matter how

50:04

hard you go, it's not hard enough, that you

50:06

can't take a break, that you're lazy if you even

50:08

wanna sit down and rest for like five minutes,

50:10

that no matter what you do, it's not

50:13

enough, that you're starting to

50:15

feel some anxiety, some depression, some burnout,

50:17

and you feel ashamed about that. And

50:19

you feel like that if you take a break or slow

50:21

down, that everything you've worked so hard for is probably

50:23

gonna fall apart. And that's the

50:26

world a lot of people are living in and they're plastering on

50:28

smiles and saying, but I got it, I got it together,

50:30

I got it together, or they feel like they have to hold it together.

50:32

They don't realize that there's this whole possibility of

50:34

the paradigm I call being a time genius, which is

50:36

where you can actually get all the things that

50:38

you wanna get done and then some, and not

50:41

feel that dread and not

50:43

run yourself into the ground and not do

50:45

things that are ineffective and not chase

50:47

these goals or this cultural

50:50

mandate for more that honestly

50:52

is sometimes, you don't want everything to grow indefinitely.

50:55

Think about cancer cells.

50:57

That's something you don't want more of. And so

50:59

sometimes actually the secret to getting

51:02

more out of life of what we really want, which

51:04

includes abundance and adventure and

51:06

success actually requires us doing

51:09

less. That's not a message we get very often,

51:11

but anyway, we could keep talking and I wanna

51:13

be quiet because I'm sure you have more questions. Yeah, and

51:16

I think this is especially, a lot of my audience

51:18

are small business owners, entrepreneurs, it's especially

51:20

important for us because as I keep growing

51:23

my company bigger and bigger, I have more

51:25

responsibility in terms of payroll and clients

51:27

and this

51:27

and that. And sometimes I'm like, what did I do? Like I could

51:29

just be rich off my podcast. All

51:33

right, so in these last couple of minutes,

51:35

I'm gonna ask you a couple of questions at the end in terms of your

51:37

secret to profiting life, but first some actionable

51:39

tips in terms of time management and productivity. What

51:42

are your favorite actionable tips that you can share with our

51:44

listeners?

51:45

I would say one is, I know this sounds really

51:47

basic, but a lot of people don't do it, is

51:49

really shift every notification

51:52

on every electrical device you have to the

51:54

off position, default it to off. Do

51:56

not let yourself be interrupted by other

51:58

people's ideas, agenda. or notifications,

52:01

that includes text messages, that includes

52:03

Slack, that includes email, that includes every

52:05

social platform. One of the biggest

52:08

things that crushes our ability to

52:10

do deep focus work is interruptions

52:12

and distractions. And when you start setting those

52:14

notifications to off, like you're gonna feel a

52:16

little uncomfortable at first, you're like, oh, am I not important? No one's

52:18

reaching out to me, is it too quiet? But I will

52:20

tell you, you'll get your core work done so

52:23

fast and then you'll have so much more space

52:25

and bandwidth to play and have fun and interact

52:28

with people and have real conversations and not

52:30

be toast at the end of your day. So

52:32

that's one thing. The other thing is I always

52:34

advise people to make a success plan,

52:36

not a to-do list. So success plan, it's

52:38

not just semantics, it's actually the framing that's really

52:41

important, is you take four minutes

52:43

at the end of your day. So before

52:45

you wrap up for the day and not to wait

52:47

until five, six, seven, eight o'clock when

52:49

your brain's fricking toast and you're running on fumes,

52:52

do it like after lunch at like one

52:54

or two or something like that. Take four minutes

52:56

and map out your success plan for the following day.

52:59

Are there any core meetings that you have to get to?

53:01

Is there any place you need to show up and be on time? And

53:03

what are the one to three, not 15, not 27, what

53:08

are the one to three really high

53:10

value projects, tasks,

53:12

to-dos that you really do need to get done and

53:15

have those on that list only? And

53:18

a success plan rather than a to-do list, first

53:20

of all, it frames you up to have

53:22

a successful day. B, you're

53:24

able to wake up and hit the ground running because you

53:26

know exactly how your

53:28

ideal day should unfold. And when

53:31

you don't stuff it with 17, 15, 30 things, you

53:35

have enough margin to be able to be responsive

53:38

to the Oshitake moments of life.

53:41

The internet fails, the technology

53:43

doesn't work. Something happens with a member of

53:45

your family. If there's enough white space in there, there's enough

53:47

margin for you to be able to not only get your most important

53:49

tasks done because you've identified what those

53:52

are in advance, but there's enough wiggle room

53:54

to be able to not let your life get out of control or

53:56

for you to feel out of control dealing with it.

53:58

Yeah, guys, this is such...

53:59

simple advice, but it will literally change your life. This

54:02

is how you make consistent progress day

54:04

over day and get shit done. When you prioritize

54:06

your stuff, you know what you're supposed to do. That's going

54:08

to actually move the needle and you don't get distracted with

54:10

the things that other people have on their agendas

54:13

in terms of what you should be doing during your day. So

54:15

I love that advice. Marie, the last

54:18

two things I ask everybody in my podcast is

54:20

what is one actionable thing our young

54:22

and profiteers can do today to become

54:24

more profiting tomorrow?

54:26

One thing they can do today to become more

54:28

profiting tomorrow. Well, if

54:31

you're a business owner, you might want

54:33

to take a look at expanding either

54:35

your prices or your offerings to offer

54:38

something that is either a little more premium

54:40

or that is catered to an audience who

54:42

is happy, willing and able

54:44

to spend more on something that's a little more

54:47

white glove or a little bit more exclusive.

54:49

I love that. And what

54:51

is your secret to profiting in life? And this

54:53

could be beyond financial.

54:55

You know what? The biggest lesson

54:58

that I continue to bring myself

55:00

back to, and I feel like it's like one of my

55:02

life lessons in this incarnation

55:04

on earth is to be in

55:07

joy as much as humanly possible,

55:10

even when things are hard, even when

55:12

things feel uncertain is to show up

55:14

and to be in joy because the journey's

55:16

not going to last that long and it goes

55:18

faster and faster and faster. And the more

55:21

that you show up, enjoy that vibration.

55:24

It helps you profit in more

55:26

ways than one. You have access to greater creativity.

55:29

You have better connections with the people around you and

55:31

the journey actually becomes a lot more fun.

55:33

What a nice way to end the show. And where can our listeners

55:36

learn more about you and everything that you do?

55:38

So Marie forleo.com it's

55:40

M a R I E F O R L E O.com is kind

55:42

of the main website. We've got hundreds of

55:44

episodes of Marie forleo of the Marie

55:46

forleo podcast and Marie TV on all

55:49

the socials. It's at Marie forleo.

55:51

And I think I'm on the website. There's a great free

55:53

kind of coaching download. It's called how to get

55:55

anything you want. So it's like a little private coaching

55:57

session, but you can download it and take it with you anywhere.

55:59

I will put all those links in the show notes.

56:03

Marie, thank you so much for your time. It was such

56:05

a pleasure.

56:06

Thank you for having me on.

56:13

Man, I loved talking to Marie Forleo.

56:15

She's somebody that I've been looking up to for years.

56:18

She is totally crushing the podcast

56:20

space, the business space. She's just

56:22

a rock star. And

56:24

I'm really intrigued by her idea

56:26

of the multi-passionate entrepreneur. So many

56:28

of my guests, they dominate one or two niches,

56:31

but Marie has dabbled in what

56:33

feels like everything, from teaching hip hop

56:35

to working on Wall Street.

56:37

And many of her passions are what drove her to take

56:39

such life-altering risks, like leaving

56:41

her stable magazine job to become a

56:43

life coach at 23.

56:46

She learned to trust her intuition and follow

56:48

her heart, even when she was terrified of

56:50

failure.

56:51

When most people are scared of something, they run

56:53

the other way. But there's a difference between

56:56

good fear and bad fear.

56:58

Good fear is accompanied by feelings of expansion

57:01

and excitement. When

57:02

you feel that kind of expansive fear,

57:04

you want to lean into it.

57:06

That's your intuition telling you to pursue the

57:08

opportunity because it's going to reap so many

57:11

benefits. Bad fear, on the other

57:13

hand, feels restrictive, doubtful,

57:15

and even physically uncomfortable.

57:17

Learning the differences between good and bad

57:19

fear will help you make smarter decisions

57:22

and take the right risks.

57:24

The ones that will ultimately propel your

57:26

growth.

57:27

You can also use the 10-year test to

57:29

see if you should pursue an opportunity.

57:31

Ask yourself, if I don't take this job

57:33

or don't pursue this opportunity,

57:35

will I regret it in 10 years? If

57:38

so, that's a sign that you should go for it.

57:40

And if you're scared to take a leap because you're afraid

57:42

of failing, remember everything

57:44

is figure-outable. You can navigate any

57:47

challenging situation with the right information.

57:50

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Young

57:52

and Profiting Podcast. If you list...