Hey, what's up?
It's Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV.
The place to be to create a business and life you love.
This is the MarieTV Call-In Show where we take live calls and try and help some people
out.
This is Gregory Patterson.
Well, howdy doody?
Always the one who's making me look fabulous with the hair and I just love him.
We just have a good time together.
So, let's do this.
Hello?
Roxanne?
Yes?
It's Marie Forleo and you are on the MarieTV Call-In Show.
Oh my gosh.
Really?
Yes.
You're on.
There's Team Forleo here.
Gregory is here.
Hello.
We are so excited to connect with you.
Tell us your question and we will do our very best to help you out.
Oh my goodness.
My goodness gracious.
Thank you so much for calling me and I just love you.
Absolutely love you.
I discovered you not too long ago.
I am wanting to understand how to present myself.
I want to understand how to present myself with vulnerability.
Show my vulnerability and still show that I'm capable of helping people guiding and
coaching.
Great.
Tell me more.
I'm coming from a past with trauma.
I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
I use art forms as my primary form of recovery practice.
I would love to share with other people how to recover their creative self whether they
think of themselves as artists or not because I think that creativity is very healing.
So I've always been a very private person and I was never sure how much to divulge and
how to present myself.
I'm kind of on the line of I feel like if I don't share, then I just really won't connect
with people.
I agree.
First of all, I'm so happy that you're sharing this question.
I know that we have tens of thousands and in the world there are millions of people
who also have PTSD or battle against anxiety or depression or any range and number of issues
that in the past has had some stigma with it.
As you said, those days are over.
So many of us need to share honestly and bravely about the things that we struggle with and
personally, Roxanne, I think that people who share about what they've been through, and
frankly what they're still going through and what they're battling against, those are the
people that we trust the most.
In this world of coaching and personally development and experts, I think the old model was all
about some sage on the stage that's always how I like to characterize it where someone
was standing up there and pretending like they have all the answers and they never make
any mistakes.
They're gonna bestow upon you this wisdom and guide you to the promised land.
First of all, I think all of that is bullshit.
I think it's so in authentic.
It is not true.
Every single one of us is a work in progress.
We are all learning.
We're all trying our best.
We will all face challenges.
Not only the ones that we had in our past, but there's ones coming up in the future.
I always like to describe myself never as a sage on the stage and always as a guide
on the side.
What does that mean?
That means I'm someone who is really enthusiastic first of all about learning, second of all
about using ideas for myself to see what works and what doesn't.
Then third, with sharing those ideas, the things I think are valuable with folks who
might also be interested and might also want to try these things.
I think for you, making that internal shift like, you know what?
Roxanne, you're a guide on the side and you have every right to share things.
Not like you're better than or less.
I know that's not the total crux of your question.
We'll get to the sharing and the vulnerability in minute.
But I like that framework because it allows me to then pour myself into a positioning
where I'm not better, I'm not less, and I can look at what to share that is relevant
for my audience.
I think this word relevance will be really important for you as you move ahead.
Know that sharing about your PTSD and the details that surround it, how much you share
is completely up to you.
You can start off dipping your toe in the water telling one or two stories.
Have your comfort level expand.
Then as you continue to engage with your audience, you'll know and you'll feel where you may
want to keep some details private just because that feels authentic to you and other places
where you're like, you know what?
I really do need to share this because all of these other folks in my audience have battled
something similar and it'll help them know they're not alone.
Yes.
And I really love the fact that you talk about sharing stories as opposed to sharing diagnoses
for example.
Saying, oh PTSD.
I think it's more authentic to talk about what it is and what the experience of it is
as opposed to just the name of it.
That's right.
One way that you can frame it is you can say, hey all of us have had challenging things
that we've battled in our past.
All of us have had things that we've experienced before that may be holding us back now and
we're not quite sure how to move through them.
For me, I can tell you a story about this or I can tell you a story about this time
when I was 15 or when I was 11.
How that manifests for me now is x, y, and z.
I want to take you on this journey moving forward so we can both learn, so we can all
support each other.
So I can share with you some of the tools and the understandings and the strategies
that not only have helped me, but that have continued and do continue to help me.
We can learn as we move forward together.
Can you see how with that type of framing, you're allowing yourself to be vulnerable
but you're also still communicating that you're capable?
Yes.
Absolutely.
This helpful?
Tremendously helpful.
It's very affirming.
I think I was there in my mind and I think there was a fear of just dipping that toe
in the water and moving forward.
Once I make the decision, I'm ready to go.
Yes, Roxanne.
That's what we like to hear.
Just know this is a process for all of us.
I think we're living in such a new time that can be filled with some conflicts about how
much do we share about ourselves.
This online space and the span of human history.
Having these tools available to us where we can share everything and people can comment
and people can get upset.
A lot of people are very brave with their anonymity behind a keyboard.
They say things they would never say to you in person.
I think it's natural to feel some of that trepidation.
It's natural to have some of those inner conflicts with how much do I share.
But when you're committed to not only a message but to transforming other people's lives and
having them feel safe around you and letting them know that they're not alone, it becomes
a lot easier.
We take that light and rather than shining it on ourselves and our fear, we turn it outward
to being of service.
For me, that has made all the difference.
Oh my goodness.
Awesome.
Yes.
Me too.
For me too.
Awesome.
Roxanne, you keep us posted.
We're gonna be cheering you on and I can't wait to hear your updates as they come along.
Thank you so much.
I'm so excited to start this challenge for women.
I really adore you Marie.
Thank you so much for your help.
Have a great rest of the day.
You too.
We adore you too darling.
Good luck with your challenge.
Bye.
Thank you.
Hello?
Hi.
Is this Esther?
Yes, this is Esther.
Hey, it's Marie Forleo and you are on the MarieTV Call-In Show.
How's it going?
Oh my god.
This is awesome.
Yes, it is awesome.
You're here with Team Forleo and Gregory and we are so excited.
Tell us your question and we will do our very best to help you out.
Sure.
My husband and I, we recently started a blog-based business called Wayfinders Now.
We are in the process of trying to figure out exactly what our niche should be.
Some examples of ones that we have are we live on a 35-foot sailboat.
I'm learning about sailing.
We're both artists.
We've cultivated more flexible work lives.
We're caregivers for a loved one with dementia.
We're also wanting to incorporate zero waste sustainability practices.
I'm also a woman of color.
We've got a lot of areas of interest.
I guess my main question is, should we narrow down or not necessarily?
How can I be more intentional about how we can serve our audience.
Absolutely.
First of all, Esther I just think it's so incredible.
Clearly you are a multi-passionate entrepreneur.
Clearly you and your husband, you guys are very creative beings and there are so many
of us in the world.
I think there's a lot of folks listening right now like, oh my gosh, how did they figure
that out?
I would like to be on a sailboat.
That's amazing.
I'm gonna ask you a few questions and we'll see if we can help you find some clarity.
First, are you guys making money with this business right now?
No.
We are not.
Then it sounds like you have created your life...
And we don't need to get into this.
I don't want you divulging anything that you don't feel comfortable with.
You've created your life in such a way where you don't necessarily need an income from
this new business at this point.
Is that correct?
That is correct.
We're able to be flexible where one of us can hold down the fort, so to speak.
About a month and a half ago I've had the liberty to focus solely on this now.
Beautiful.
For the first time.
That's great.
That is awesome.
Congratulations.
We love that.
We are cheering that on.
What I would encourage you to do is really get clear on what your goals are for this
business.
Some people start a business and they're like, you know what?
It would be amazing if in the next one year or two years, three years, I could reach this
hundred thousand dollar in revenue mark.
That is a number I'm pulling out of my butt.
Some people are higher, some people are lower.
When we're talking about a for profit business, putting some type of financial goal in place
is really helpful, especially at the stage you're at right now.
I'll tell you why.
When it is a for profit business, it has to make profit.
For you to know how much you would like to make starts to give you something to measure
all of your ideas against.
You can look at all of these ideas and go, hmmm.
Being a caregiver for a loved one with dementia, what are the possibilities to earn revenue
in that space?
What are the services?
What are the products I could offer?
What are the price points?
How much would I have to work?
How much would I have to make all of this work together in order to possibly reach the
financial goal that I've set as important to me?
Then you measure that against sailing.
This is just one framework, just one lens that we're looking through initially because
this is not just a simple black and white answer.
Esther, you getting clear on your financial reasons for wanting to start this business
is one thing I'm gonna encourage you to really look at.
Then we're gonna look at the topic areas.
Which of the seven, ten, five, three, whatever number that is...
When you honestly get real with yourself and you think about devoting five, ten, 15 hours
a day to this particular topic area for the next 12 months, 24, 36 months, which of them
makes you want to stick a fucking fork in your eye and which of them makes your heart
light up?
Because I will tell you, like you as a multi-passionate entrepreneur, there are many, many different
things that I could focus on.
There are many ways that we could earn money with the business.
I focus on what brings me to life, what makes me come alive, what makes me want to research
and talk about and learn about and test literally until my eyeballs could fall out.
That's how passionate I am about the things that we say yes to.
You put all of your ideas through that lovely filter.
Then that'll help you narrow it down.
Then you want to think about the market itself, meaning who are the people that you would
be serving.
For example, I know in my own business I'm dealing with a lot of creatives.
I'm dealing with artists.
I'm dealing with multi-passionate entrepreneurs mostly.
Not all, but mostly.
We have a lot of folks in our audience who even if they do work within a corporate environment
or maybe they work for the government or are teachers, there is this creative spirit within
them that still finds a way to come to life in their work.
For example, I don't think that I would necessarily work well if I only focused on let's say corporate
accountants, if that was the only niche that I was going to because I don't necessarily
have a lot in common with just that narrow type of human.
Does that make sense?
Yes.
By the way, for all you corporate accounts that are listening.
I love you motherfuckers.
I'm saying, if it was all just you, I might get a little bored, 'cause I need some more
variety.
Does that make sense?
You have to serve people where you feel this deep, heart-centered love towards the audience.
You know why?
Because you are gonna wanna work your ass off to deliver value to them.
You're gonna constantly, without feeling the need like you should, you're gonna be reading
the right magazines.
You're gonna be going to the conferences.
You're gonna be naturally finding and unearthing the newest, cutting-edge research, or whatever
is necessary to stay at the top of your field.
Those are some of the things that I think you should consider.
Then once you've narrowed down, you're gonna have to choose one based on your intuition
and hit it.
What I mean by that?
Clarity comes from engagement, not thought.
There's no magic business crystal ball that's gonna be able to tell you.
Not me, not any other business strategist or coach, and if somebody tells you that they
can, run, 'cause they're a fucking liar.
No one will be able to tell you what will actually work until you get out in the field
and start doing it.
Start engaging.
Start working within that industry, even if it's for free.
That's where you're gonna find that clarity, Esther.
And any time your mind's like "But I need to figure it all out in advance!"
Say "Nope," cut that conversation off, and take a step.
Take action, and remember that clarity comes from engagement, not thought.
So awesome.
It's all figureoutable, right?
It really is.
Esther, we love you.
I hope that this was helpful for you.
Definitely.
Really empowering.
Thank you so much for taking the time.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
We're wishing you luck, and please do keep us posted on your progress.
Definitely.
Take care.
Have a great day.
Bye, darling.
Bye.
Hello?
Hi there.
Hi!
Is this Eli and Joseph?
Oh, we can see them.
Hey, guys.
Hi!
You're on with Team Forleo.
Gregory's here, and we are so excited to have you on the MarieTV Call-In show.
We're so excited to be talking with you guys.
Yay!
So tell us your question, and we will do our very best to help you guys out.
Okay.
So after more than two years of planning and doing B-School and designing websites and
writing blogs and connecting to our tribe, and sending the surveys and doing all of that
stuff.
Online and live classes.
So our question is, we're still limping along a little bit.
Our question is, do we keep showing up, trying new approaches and hoping that the world starts
to take notice?
Or at what point do we say "I think we're done," and we start barking up another tree?
Yes.
Great question, you guys.
If I'm understanding correctly, some of your retreats have sold out, yes?
Yes.
Okay, cool.
You're getting confetti thrown for you, because that's awesome, and we always like when things
sell out.
So, a couple of things.
We're gonna step back for a moment first.
Most businesses, in my experience, take much longer than two years.
And if heard you right, a piece of that two years -- a large piece of it -- has been spent
learning, understanding, taking classes, really absorbing how to do this.
So it's not like it's been two years of nose to the grindstone, every single day, marketing
your butts off and putting out all these offers.
A big piece of that has been the learning piece, yeah?
Oh yeah.
Yes.
Big piece.
And it continues to be, as we get more into it, learning to do the online courses and
how to launch it, and doing the pre-launching, and the email sequence.
Really developing it.
It's overwhelming.
I know, I am with you, I've been down all those paths.
So all good.
I would say, understanding that, especially these kind of businesses, they're a long game.
When you hear stories like "Oh my god, I hit six figures in six months!"
It's like, I wanna smack all those people, 'cause nine times out of 10, that's not true.
It takes time to learn all this stuff.
One of the questions you guys should ask yourself is, do we love this business or an aspect
of this business, one of these offerings enough, to really keep going?
For me, I had seven years of side gigs as I was growing my business, understanding e-courses,
understanding how to do launches, understanding how to create content consistently, until
I got to a place financially and creatively to be able to do my business full-time.
And my story is not unique.
I was actually just writing a chapter in my book about how, and again, this is different
context, but my friend Elizabeth Gilbert, I think it was the first 10 years of her writing
career, she had side jobs.
And then she published some books and still had side jobs before things really started
to cook and roll.
My friend Steven Pressfield, I feel like it was 17 years before he published his first
novel.
And I understand a business is different than a writing career, but the point is still the
same.
Things take much longer than we want them to, always, especially in the business world.
And I think in the online space, it can become easy to be seduced by the success stories
of people just hitting it, hitting it fast, and then we make ourselves feel like shit
and think that we're either failures or we're not fast enough, or this isn't working, when
really it's just about patience.
But, your question to yourselves, should we bark up another tree, that's less about the
results right now and more about you guys tapping in and going "Do we wanna keep pushing
it on this lever?
Do we love these retreats so much that we're gonna keep barking up this tree, even if it
takes us another two to three years to really hit the type of revenue and profit goals that
we know we can?"
The other thing I wanna say to you guys is this.
When you're starting a business, it's a lot of throwing spaghetti at the wall.
It's a lot of seeing what sticks.
And we don't know that until we actually do it.
Sometimes people are like "You've gotta have a membership site," and you go do a membership
site and you're like "I hate this shit!"
Or other people are like "Oh my God, you gotta sell e-courses.
That's where it all's at."
And you're like "You know what?
I really don't like it."
But you guys, you're like, these retreats.
All of a sudden these retreats are the things that are selling out.
If there's actually an alignment between you guys enjoying this and understanding, wow,
our audience seems to respond to this, and there's all these things we could improve.
My point is, you wanna do more of what works.
Rather than following a set formula or road map or script about what your modern business
should look like, I want you guys to take a step back and go "What in our business is
working?
Are these retreats working?
And do I love them enough, do we love them enough, to make them the best in the marketplace?
How can we innovate?
How can we charge more?
What does it look like if we put the mass amounts of our energy towards making this
work?"
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Yes.
Definitely.
It's just a lot of what we read and everything's like, "Choose the one thing, stay with that,
don't veer," and then we're both feeling called to... like Joseph right now is feeling called
to doing a smoking cessation residential program.
Four years ago, I went through a cancer ordeal.
I learned a lot through all that, and I wanna do kind of a cancer recovery thing.
So even though we might not be working specifically together on that same goal, we're really being
called to go in that direction.
But we're a little bit scared, even though it feels really exciting to us.
What's scary?
I'm curious.
What's scary about it?
Is it because it's something you really want, or it's just something you haven't seen done
before?
No, we're fine that it hasn't been done before.
What's scary is that in order to put energy towards that, 'cause the last two years we've
been doing all of that plus our interior design business.
And we just decided two and a half weeks ago, okay, we have to let go of our interior design
business in order to put 152% towards all the else that we're doing.
It's been hard.
Our side gig was not just a side gig, it was like a major business that takes a lot of
time and effort.
It's so hard to focus on healing when you're designing five different remodeling projects
at once.
Yes.
The energy's so different.
So we decided, you know what?
If we're really committed to this, we need to let go of the big projects, maybe just
do some smaller things, and really jump with our two feet into this.
This is really what our passion is, is to really support other people to their highest
potential.
Yeah.
I love this, and I think you guys have given us all a clue too, and I know this to be true
in my own life.
When I'm spread too thin, and there's too much happening, I am not at my best.
Simplify to amplify, right?
Simplify to amplify.
I've always reapplied that in my life, because chaos theory.
Things have a way, especially when you're creative, when you're multi-passionate, when
you wanna help a lot of people, there's all these new projects that come onto your plate.
All these new things that you can do, and it takes a conscious intentional effort to
say no, and to peel things off of your plate.
So then rather than having your focus spread so thin and it's so not powerful, you get
laser focused, and the whole beam of your energy and your soul fires into that one,
two, or maybe even three projects, and that's when you take them up.
So I think, based on what y'all are saying, you're in the right zone.
And here's the thing.
None of us have a crystal ball when it comes to business, or when it comes to any project.
And I feel like when we get to the end of our lives, when we look back, we are gonna
be so grateful that we took the risks on things that we really believed in.
Even if they don't turn out as we had hoped, there's always this incredible learning that
happens, and usually it informs where we're supposed to go next.
You could have never come to this insight or this new level, even if we fail and flop,
which I've done a million times, it always brings me to something beautiful that's next.
That had I stayed safe, had I said "You know what, I'm not gonna do it because I'm afraid,"
I would've missed out on so many pieces on my life that I've most treasured.
I think you guys are right on the money.
I think simplify to amplify.
Take a look at what's working, do more of that.
And I also wanna recommend this.
While I am a fan of lifelong learning, you guys are B-Schoolers so please come back as
many times as you want to the community and as many times to that material.
Curb yourself from signing up for any more shit, because e-learning stuff can be addictive.
It's almost like gambling, you're like "Another program, and another program, and another
program!"
And then you get spread so thin, but you don't master anything.
You're both passionate, experienced enough.
You have enough tools inside.
Now is the time to apply it.
Awesome.
Great.
Hey, we do have one question, can we ask you?
Yes, of course, go for it.
We don't know if this, this is a place where we get stuck a little bit.
Our interior design business was called SublimeDesigner.com, so we were kind of known locally as the Sublime
Guys.
And then we took that and used that for our coaching business called Sublime Guys.
But I, Joseph, have a little bit of energy that maybe some people that don't know us
through interior design, which is the whole rest of the world, they might have a reaction
like "Oh, who are these conceited guys showing up like 'Hey, we're sublime!
Do what we're doing!
Yeah yeah yeah!'"
He has energy about that, and I feel like it's a really great branding because for 16
years we've been known as the Sublime Guys.
And all of a sudden, there's nothing wrong with knowing, but yeah, our life is sublime
and it can be for everyone and that's where we're coming from.
Yeah.
Well I definitely have feedback on this.
Okay.
I consider naming, in this specific instance, what you guys are talking about right now,
this is a creative cul-de-sac.
No one gives a shit but y'all.
And here's what I mean by that.
What your coaching clients care about is the results that you can get them.
I really don't think the name "Sublime" is turn-off-able enough.
That's not like "Oh, God, I can't even get on this website, 'cause sublime, that word's
awful!"
I don't think that's the case that we're dealing with.
Your clients, who will be attracted to you, they don't even care about coaching.
They want the results that you can promise them.
Don't spend any more of your precious energy thinking about the name for that.
And I know it's tempting.
I know it's tempting.
I know it's one of those things that you're gonna be like "But it really matters!"
Please trust me, it doesn't.
Not at this stage.
Keep going.
Focus on bringing that money in.
Focus on the projects that are working, and getting this new business, both of your pieces
of it, up and running.
The naming stuff, if you're gonna change it, that can happen later.
Awesome.
Really wise.
Yeah.
Thank you.
But you guys, we love you so much.
Thank you for a brilliant set of questions, and please, keep us posted on the progress
and keep letting us know how it's going, and I'll see you in the halls of B-School next
semester.
Awesome.
Sounds great.
Awesome.
Bye, you guys.
Love you.
Bye.
Bye. Ciao.
Ciao.
Alright, party people.
That wraps it up for another episode of the MarieTV Call-In Show.
Now, I would love to hear from you.
We had some great callers today, some great Qs, some great As.
What resonated most with you, and why?
Leave a comment below and let us know.
Now, as always, the best damn conversations happen over at the magical land of MarieForleo.com.
It's where Greg hangs out.
Dot com.
I'm there all the time.
All the time.
Anyway, you need to go there and leave a comment now.
And once you are there, if you're not already, please subscribe to our email list and become
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Why?
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Thank you so much for watching, and we will catch you next time on MarieTV.
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I'm so tired of all this lovey-dovey shit.
A lot.
Well, howdy, buongiorno.
Howdy.
What's your question, darling?
I want a sniff.
I'll just stick my face in your Rice Krispy treats.
Are we recording?