Is This The Single Greatest Way to Motivate Yourself?

Hey what’s up? It’s Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV, the place to be to create a business in life you love. This is our live call in show and this is Gregory Patterson.

Well, hello there. Salutations.

He is always responsible for the fabulous hair just so know.

I love this pony.

I just love Greg to pieces. Yes, I like the pony too. We’re gonna get started with our first caller.

Hello?

Hi, is this Shamia?

Yes. Oh my gosh.

Hey, it’s Marie Forleo, how you doing?

I’m doing so good. Oh my god, I’m gonna start crying right now.

You’re so sweet.

Oh my god.

Welcome to the show my love. You’re on live with myself and Team Forleo.

Hi.

I have Greg here who you’ve probably seen on MarieTV. Tell us your question and then we’ll dive in and see if we can help.

Yeah. Hi everyone.

Hi. Hello lovey.

I’m out of breath. Oh my god. I’m a stock photographer and right now I run a Patreon-based stock photo library. It’s a monthly thing and it’s really cool. I have a goal to reach 200 people by September. I’m wondering what your advice is in terms of where I should focus my efforts, my marketing and PR efforts, at least right now for the short term. Whether that’s a collaboration or Facebook ads or should I be pitching to magazines? I just feel so overwhelmed with all of the possibilities. I’m just not sure where I should be focusing my attention in terms of growing this a lot more. Does that make sense?
It totally makes sense. I love from your question and if I heard you correctly, it’s predominantly showcasing women of color and other marginalized groups?

Yes. Yes.

Love it.

It’s for mostly black women, Latinas, Asian women, but also I want to represent the queer community. There’s not a lot of representation of gay couples or bisexual people either. I really want to incorporate that into my stock photography as well. I know that this is something that people would love if they knew about it. I’m just trying to figure out how to get people to hear.

Absolutely. By the way, you are so not alone. First of all, congratulations on what you’re doing. I love your business idea and your 100% right. It is so necessary and so needed.

Thank you.

Just to let you know, you are not alone. When we have something that we’re really excited about and all of the different possibilities can almost keep us in paralysis analysis and frozen like we don’t know where to put our attention. I’ll give you my perspective on this. The two places I think you should focus on, number one: definitely reaching out to, I know you mentioned collaborators or other influencers. I think finding other people who have the exact type of demographic that you’re looking to serve, those are the folks that you want to develop relationships with and see if you can provide either some stock photography to them or get a relationship going, a genuine one. Follow them on their Instagram accounts, have conversations with them, whether it’s in DM or otherwise, pay attention to their work, and share with them what you’re up to because I guarantee if you had between five and ten people who are reaching the type of persons you want to serve, that’s what’s gonna have your business take off faster than any Facebook ad or anything like that.

So developing those relationships, that should be your primary focus. Some people may not be interested, but there will be some who will. This is really a numbers game. It is about, I can tell from your voice and from who you are, you’re someone who cares a lot and you use your heart. Using that heart and that genuine connection ability that you have to make these connections with folks that you may not know, that’s what’s gonna get you there.

The second thing that I think focusing on is PR efforts. Finding perhaps some of those same influencers or different accounts that might pay attention to this. I’m thinking about Refinery29. I’m thinking about potentially Design*Sponge, folks who the first that came to mind who would be absolutely excited about picking up an idea like this. Again, when it comes to those PR efforts, I would go narrow and very targeted and focused. Again, there might be two or three other. Whether it’s online publications or websites that you feel reach that exact type of demographic. Go a little bit more narrow there and go wider when it comes to your collabs and influencers. Does that make sense?

Yes. Yes. Can I ask a follow up question?

Of course.

Awesome. This is amazing. Thank you so much. About collaboration, I am friends with pretty big names in the industry.

Great.

I have this fear and anxiety of approaching them for my business purposes. I built my friendship with them but I feel weird… I’m just not sure how to approach them from this perspective versus just being their friend. Does that make sense?

It makes total sense. This is one of the areas that I think I’m actually really good at because I’ve navigated in these weathers before. Here’s how I would approach it if I were you. Put together your presentation, put together your idea, and then set up a time to talk with your friends. Say, hey look. I just want to share this idea with you. I want to ask for your opinion, ask for your feedback. Then when you ask them if they’d be interested in potentially sharing it with their followers, let them know this.

Say, hey look. I want to ask you something. It makes me a little uncomfortable, but I want you to know this, our friendship is paramount above everything. You can say no. I’m not gonna feel bad. I’m not gonna hold it against you and there’s not gonna be any weirdness between us. But I believe in this so much and I wanted to share this with you. If you’re open to it, great. If you’re not, no hard feelings. I’ll continue to love you. We’re gonna continue to be friends and nothing bad is gonna happen between our friendship.

This way whenever I’ve had conversations like this with people in that regard, you’re presenting something that you’re passionate about, and you’re letting them know that if they decline or say no, they’re not going to hurt your feelings too bad. Of course, we’re all human. We all have disappointments. I always have done things like this with friends when I’ve wanted to collaborate with them or people that I know but we don’t have a business kind of relationship. They’ve always given me the feedback that they really appreciate that I give them an easy out. If it’s not something that they’re interested in or something doesn’t feel right, they know they can decline and I’m still gonna be there. I’m still gonna be their friend and I’m not gonna have any weird vibes between us.

Gotcha. I’m sorry. I was thrown off when you set put together a presentation. Do you mean like a PDF, like a pitch deck similar to that? Is it just a one sheet type of-

It could be simple. Like a one sheet. I don’t know how much and how close you are with these folks that are high level influencers. Depending on your relationship with them, it’s gonna inform how you present this. It might be a one sheet. If they don’t know what you’re up to, you might not even have to put together a presentation. It might be like, hey I’d love to talk to you about this project I’m doing. I would love to get your opinion, get your feedback. Do you see any places I could improve? And, is this something you’d be interested or willing to share with your audience? If not, no hard feelings, but I’m so excited to get this out and I thought you might be interested.

Gotcha. Perfect. Oh my god. I could start crying right now. I just want to say really quickly you have been my mentor from afar since 2011. You were the reason I started pursuing entrepreneurship. I’m getting emotional. You’re the reason that I started this journey. Because of you, I have so much more freedom and time to actually pursue what I love. I never thought someone like me, like I come from humble beginnings. My mom passed away when I was 16 from leukemia. For the longest time, I just never thought I would become the person that I am today. I just want to say thank you so much. I appreciate you and your team and everyone who had put out that content and just being a positive force of nature out on the internet. I just want to say thank you so much and I appreciate you.

Shamia you are making us cry. I know you can’t see us right now but the whole time got…
Going through it.

We’ve all got tissues.

I’m sorry.

No, no, no. Thank you so much for your kind words, it means so much to us. I will tell you it means so much to me personally that you’ve been around since 2011. You’re getting a confetti bomb right now.

Thank you.

I just want to congratulate you for what you’ve done and how you have taken your gifts and how you’ve taken a resource on the internet and used it to build your strength and to express what only you are here to express. We’ll be here continuing to support you. We love you. We can’t wait to hear more about your business and we’ll link this up in the show and post production so that I know that there’s many, many people in our audience who are very interested in the type of lifestyle photography that you want to spread. We’ll be supporting you as well. Thank you so much. Thanks for being on the show darling.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Enjoy your day guys. Thank you.

Thank you. Bye darling.

Love ya.

Bye. I love y’all bye.

I feel like that advice you gave for Marie, gave her permission to breath to. You could just hear her, okay, okay.

Yeah. She’s got it. I think for all of us to remember. I certainly know this is true in my life. The most beautiful breakthroughs and growth has always happened through connections with other people and through being able to have that courage to ask for the meeting. Sometimes even with MarieTV. Me reaching out to book guests, they don’t know who I am and I don’t know what they think of me or if they have the time. Having just that little bit of boldness and that little bit of courage to see if someone may want to work with you, even if they don’t, I think there’s a win in reaching out because you start to build that muscle and the breakthroughs start coming. It’s like a miracle.

Hello?

Hi, is this Iesha?

This is Iesha.

Hi, it’s Marie Forleo and you are on the MarieTV live call-in show. How are you?

Hi I’m great.

I wanted to welcome you. Let you know you’re here with myself and Team Forleo. If you let us know your question, we will do our best to help you out.

I’m sorry. I’m a little sick.

That’s okay.

My question is, I go to work, I work a 9 to 5. I have all these ideas that I want to do to get ahead in my life. I always have them at work, but once I get home, I no longer feel like doing any of that stuff. My question is, how do I get out of that funk or how do I find the motivation to actually come home after working 9 to 5 to do the things that I want to do to get me ahead in life?

Yes. Great question, Iesha. I know that there are thousands of people that are nodding their head. One of them is right next to me right now. Greg Patterson is right next to me raising his hand. He can relate to this. Honestly, I can relate to this as well because even though I have my own business, there’s many times when I’m doing the work throughout the whole day and I have all these other ideas and I’m like, you know what? I gonna do that at 7PM or I’m gonna do that at 8PM and then 7 and 8PM comes around and that’s not happening.

It’s not happening.

Right. I have a couple questions for you. One question, when you go home, what’s your pattern? What do you usually do in the evenings?

I usually take a shower and just hop into bed. I’m just ready to watch TV or I grab food if I didn’t already grab it on the way home. I’m just ready to get into bed. That’s my pattern. Unless I have something to do, that’s it.

Thank you, by the way for sharing that. The reason I wanted to ask is I think all of us, human beings. I’ve seen different statistics. It’s anywhere between 42% and last night I was actually reading up to 95% of our daily lives are habitual. Meaning we do it on autopilot. One of the things that I’ve noticed for myself and for others over the years is this is especially true at the end of the work day. We usually have these rituals that we go through, which it sounds like you have yours as well.

One of the things that I want you to consider experimenting with is this. For three days out of the week. Not all five, and you can even start with two if you want. I’d love you to come home and create a new ritual. Maybe, and this would be my recommendation for you is putting on work out gear, setting it up the night before so when you come home, it’s sitting out and setting the time. Let’s say it’s 6:30 to 7:00 or 7:00 to 7:30. It doesn’t have to be a long time. To get yourself home, put your work out clothes on and actually work out before you eat dinner, before you do anything else.

I’ve done that at times where I’ve wanted to change my pattern because when you change your physiology, everything opens up. You have this surge of energy. I don’t want it to screw with your sleeping pattern. Again, I don’t want you necessarily working out for an hour, an hour and a half. If you do some type of little burst of physical activity and listening to great music, I guarantee you, you will find another pocket. Whether it’s an hour, 45 minutes, 90 minutes of time where, girl, you are gonna be on fire. You’re gonna look around. Not allowed to watch the TV. Not allowed to have anything that’s heavy carbs that are gonna take you down and put you right into bed. I promise you, if you’re willing to experiment with this for two days, maybe three days a week and do that for a month, you’re gonna find that, that physiology change in and of itself will open up new channels and motivation you didn’t know you had.

I’m gonna do that.

Greg, he’s giving a little arm hump.

I’m gonna do that to.

Saying he’s gonna do that.

You’re gonna do that Greg?

We’re gonna hold each other accountable on Instagram.

It’s so hard.

Yes, on Instagram. Iesha, I have another question for you. Do you usually work out every day?

I don’t.

You don’t. By the way, don’t feel bad about that. Everybody in the MarieTV studio, there’s other folks saying I don’t normally work out every day. There’s no guilt or shame in that at all. Once we bring our awareness to something and again, this is something that I’ve seen for myself over time and throughout the years for every one of us humans. We happen to live in a time and space where we’re so sedentary. No one really ever teaches us this incredible well of energy that exists in our bodies. We never tap into it.

Then if you do the pattern. You go to work every day and then you come home and then you have that pattern of taking a shower and then getting in your beautiful, cozy bed and watching something real fun and having a little food. If you never break that pattern, you’ll never be able to discover this incredible well of energy and focus and motivation that’s living in your body right now. If you’re willing to experiment and give it a go, I can promise you. Again, it doesn’t matter whether you do some dancing, whether you do cycling. You can do high intensity working out in your house. I live in very small places. Sometimes that I need to do a workout, I will drop to the floor. I’ll do my pushups. I’m doing my jumping jacks. It’s not about having fancy equipment or necessarily even going to a gym. There’s free workouts online. There’s so much available. What it is about is making that commitment two to three times a week to show up. You’ve got to say the time that you’re gonna do it. You can’t just go, I’m gonna work out on Monday. It’s gotta be working out Monday in my living room at 6:30.

Exercise.

Yes. For 30 minutes. That will increase your chances of successfully completing the goal three to four times over. Cool. Then let us know how it goes. I promise you, if you change up this physiology, a lot of things are gonna open for you. Cool?

Cool.

That’s your prescription girl. Break out of the funk. Please do let us know how it goes. Thank you so much for calling in today.

I definitely will. No problem. Thank you for calling me back like three times.

Yes. We’re committed. We’re persistent. We don’t give up. All right darling.

Thank you so much.

Bye.

Bye.

Nancy.

Hello.

Hi, is this Nancy?

Yes it is.

Hey. It’s Marie Forleo and you’re on the MarieTV live call-in show. How you doing?

I am so good and especially hearing from you. How are you?

We are wonderful. You’re on with myself, and Greg Patterson, and Team Forleo is here so you might hear some other voices in the background. What I’d love is to hear your question and see if we can help you out today.

That would be great. Hi Team Forleo, by the way.

Hello, lovely.

Hey. You’re all amazing. My question was, I’m interested in working with abused women. Coming from a situation like that myself, I know what it’s like. I’ve been doing a lot of work on myself, a lot of healing, and personal development, self improvement, and all that stuff. I guess my question is, at what point do I know if I’m ready to help somebody else, you know? Yeah, I think that’s my question.

It’s a great question by the way, Nancy. I just want to acknowledge you for your heart and your strength for taking what is clearly been a painful and challenging experience for you and wanting to turn that into service for others. That’s first and foremost. Here’s my perspective on your Q. I think that each of us have an ability to serve and help others. We don’t have to be perfect in order to do so. What I mean by that. As long as you are transparent about where you’re at in your journey, and then being able to say, hey you know what? I’m not perfect. I’m still going through this myself but I want to share with you what has been really useful for me, what has been transformative, the resources that I found to be really helpful, and I’m gonna keep sharing on my healing journey as well so we can be together. The way I’ve always positioned myself, I’m not a big fan of the sage from the stage, like anyone coming like they’ve got it all together because frankly my love, I don’t think anyone does.

But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have something to share or to be able to open up a space where other people who have experienced the type of trauma that you have can’t come together and start to heal together or come to a safe space where they can feel an ability to express themselves to find resources to move ahead and to find a sense of connection and sisterhood that can be really healing. I don’t think it’s about a point of being healed enough. I don’t think any of us are ever fully healed. I think we’ll all be on the journey until we take our last breath. I think it’s more about transparency, more about the clarity in your positioning, and more about you saying, you know what?, I’m not a sage from the stage. I’m a guide on the side. I’m standing shoulder to shoulder with you. I’m going through this myself and I’m here to help life all of us up as I lift myself up as we move ahead.

That is such a fantastic answer. This was so incredibly helpful. Thank you so much. This is golden.

That makes me so happy. Again, just for Nancy and for everyone watching. There’s not anyone out there that I’ve discovered and in this journey that I’ve had over 18 years. I’ve had such incredible opportunities to meet people who everyone considers the best of the best. The one thing that struck me about all of them is they’re all human. They all admit that they are still learning. They are still growing. They are still hungry to find new ideas and new perspectives and to take a look at themselves and to see where they may have blind spots. I think as long as we all come at it from that place of humility and that place of always being a student, then we give ourselves the best chance of really connecting with others from a place of genuineness and authenticity.

That sounds great. Thank you so much.

You’re so welcome. Thanks for your question. We’ll be cheering you on and thanks for continuing to watch MarieTV. Have a great day, Nancy.

Yeah, you too. Thank you. Bye.

Bye.

Bye Nancy.

Love it.

Absolutely love that and being open to just the evolution. Everybody’s on their own journey, but you can learn from your journey. You can learn from my journey. We can learn from everybody’s journey and just continue going.

And being a student.

Yeah, being a student.

There you have it folks. We had another MarieTV live call-in show. That was awesome. Greg, thanks for being my co pilot.

Thanks for letting me kick it with you.

We would love to know what was your favorite question or what most resonated with you and why. As always, the best conversations happen after the episode at the magical land of marieforleo.com get your butt over there and leave a comment now. Once you’re there, be sure to subscribe to our email list and become what’s known as.

An MF insider.

You’ll get instant access to an audio we created called How to Get Anything You Want, plus some exclusive content, some special giveaways, and a few updates from me that I don’t share anywhere else. Really.

You don’t.

Stay on your game and keep going for your dreams because the world needs that very special gift that only you have. Thank you so much for watching and we’ll see you next time on MarieTV.

Boom.

B-School is coming up. Want in? For more info and free training, go to joinbschool.com.

In your crease?

Peace in your crease. What? I want peace in my crease.
I’ve never heard that.

Who doesn’t want peace in your booty?

I heard peace and hair grease.

He’s getting hot.