Marie Forleo on Living in the Moment

Marie Forleo is interviewed by Moustapha Camara

MC: So, right now, you’re a successful entrepreneur who’s living her dreams. At what point in your life did you realize that you finally made it?

Marie Forleo: I don’t know if any entrepreneur ever feels like they truly made it, because entrepreneurs in general are people that want to create something new. For me, I think [I made it] once I got to leave my other jobs.

When I first started out, at my own business, I was bartending, I was teaching a lot of fitness classes; I was doing a lot of different things, all of which were things I love, but it was to fund my business. It was really to get the money to keep everything going.

Once I can step away from having a lot of different jobs to having all the income coming in from my business.

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MC: I read that when you began as a personal coach, there was a time when you were broke, in debt, and unsuccessful yourself, while teaching others how to be successful. What steps did you take to turn this situation around to get rich and happy?

Marie Forleo: One of the things that I did is really get honest with myself about how my life was and when I was taking a look at my debt and how unsatisfied I was, I made a conscious choice to go find information that would help me change that.

I felt like I had some old tools, and some old wisdom that wasn’t quite up to date, and so I really stuck with integrity and said “in order for me to be successful helping and teaching other people, I have to own this for myself.

So, I made a very conscious decision to get rid of my debt and just work my butt off; do whatever I had to do to just clear everything out. I just got really interested in only working with teachers that walked their talk.

As far as relationships go, I would only study with people who had great relationships, and from people that are actually happy and satisfied. Some people can pretend that they are, but you can tell they’re really not.

So, I just made a very conscious choice to find the best teachers I could and study the best stuff I could and only go back out and teach when I felt like I was on solid ground.

MC: Having that experience, what level of success do you think and entrepreneur should reach before writing books, coaching and doing seminars?

Marie Forleo: I think that they have to have an experience that something works.

For example, if they’re in a space where they’re teaching relationships, they should have gone through at least a couple relationships and seen some things that don’t work, figured out some stuff that does, and really be able to share that from an authentic honest place.

I think that anyone that teaches is always on a journey, so they’re always gonna want to bring new tools and insights to their students. It’s not about being perfect, but I do think it’s about having a certain level of trust in your own intuition and balancing that with external experience.

MC: As a personal coach, how do you teach people how to break through the glass ceiling? How do you get someone to reach goals that they’ve been struggling for a while to reach?

Marie Forleo: The first step is to get honest about what’s holding them back. Most of the time it’s an idea in their mind and a thought, rather than a physical obstacle.

One of the things that I teach people is to not live in their mind, but to stay very engaged in the moment and stay engaged in action. When you can train people to do that, it becomes very easy for them to stop listening to this [their head] and all the negative stuff up ‘here’, and to really just keep staying in action and producing results.

So, it’s more about giving them the tools to retrain how they operate in their business and their life.

MC: But, how do you live in the moment while trying to set long term goals?

Marie Forleo: That’s a great question. It’s a paradox. Most of us have a dream that we each want to bring into fruition; something that we know we want to create.

In any moment, you can be either thinking about that, or just taking the next step in order to bring it into fruition.

So that may mean making a big phone call, writing marketing copy, making a customer call; there’s all kinds of actions that need to be taken in order to make that future idea come to life now. So it’s really about staying engaged in this moment and trusting that each step brings your future vision into creation.

MC: Once you’ve already reached your goal, and you’re at the point where you’re rich and successful, how do you stay successful and manage that success?

Marie Forleo: Having a support team around you, having people who’s opinion you trust, so that when you find yourself in a space that’s challenging or you just have a lot of options, and you’re not quite sure what to chose, that you have a coach or great support team of people that you can bounce ideas off of.

You trust that their gonna give you not only their honest opinion, but that they have your best interest at heart. So, it’s also about community as well.

[Continued in article: Marie Forleo’s Living in the Moment, by Moustapha Camara.]

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Marie Forleo is “a best-selling author, speaker, online-entrepreneur, Nike Athlete and Master Trainer, fitness personality, and dancer/choreographer.

“Her Rich, Happy & Hot™ brand is dedicated to empowering women with tools to create financial, spiritual and emotional wealth through entrepreneurship.”

Learn about the Rich, Happy & Hot B-School: See video with Laura Roeder & Marie Forleo: “For Entrepreneurial Women Who Want To Thrive” – and get their FREE Six Pillars of Online Success report.

Marie Forleo on Living in the Moment

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