How to Get RICH In 2024

Marie Forleo

If you want to get rich in business this year, here are six things to stop doing right now! Ignoring these is what keeps most entrepreneurs stuck, struggling, and barely scraping by. But when you get these right, not only is your bank account going to get swol, but you are going to be way friggin’ happier. 

Now, pay special attention to number four and six. They're a little more controversial, but I think the most important. If you want true financial freedom, this is how to add massive growth and a lot of zeros to your bottom line. 

You know that saying, I've got bigger fish to fry. If you really want to make bank, do not waste your time and energy frying minnows. Here's what I mean. One year, I thought to myself, I really need a low-price product. Everyone says you should have a low-price product, right? And I didn't. Everything was either a hundred percent free or thousands of dollars. What can I say? I'm expensive and worth it dot com. 

So, I literally took months, in addition to creating all our free content and running the existing business, to create this new low-priced offer. And I remember thinking, oh my God, I'm going to help so many more people, and the sales are going to be bonker pants! You want to know the results? Massively disappointing. I mean, based on the kind of conversions that I'm used to, this was terrible. Look, if you're anything like me, somewhat of a perfectionist, you pour a lot of time and effort into almost everything you create, right? And, launching anything new it takes a ton of time and energy and attention. So, if you're going to create something, don't focus on the minnows. Focus on the whales. Let me break this down.

Let's say you want to make a million dollars in your business. So you could create a hundred-dollar offer, and you need to sell 10,000 units. Now look, that's a fair amount of sales for anybody. Or you can make a thousand dollars offer, and you need to sell a thousand units. I think that's a lot more doable. Or check this out! You could get creative. You could get bold and make a $5,000 offer, and you'd only need 200 people. And look, you got your Millie. And by the way, if you don't think you have the creativity and the value inside of you to make a smoking $5,000 offer, I guarantee you're thinking way too small. Bottom line, it's a whole lot easier to sell something to 200 people than to 10,000. And that is how for the same time and effort and energy, you can make a lot more money faster once you stop chasing the minnows.

[Marie reads a comment from Emma] “Marie, I would truly love to quit my teaching job and open a studio for women this year. I have the concept certification and products. I simply don't have the courage to start.”
Want to know what separates the top 3 to 4% of entrepreneurs, those who actually make a huge impact and get paid to do it, from those who don't, they think and do the opposite from most other people, especially about courage. You know, back in 2019, I had this crazy idea to launch my book. Everything is Figureoutable. I thought to myself, what if a Beyoncé concert, a TED Talk, and a block party had a baby? That's what my book launch party should be in New York City, right? Sounds like so much fun!
Now, the only problem. Is to my knowledge, a book launch like that had never been done before. I was both super excited and super terrified. I honestly didn't know how to pull it off, but I needed to walk my talk. I mean, I just wrote a book called Everything is Figureoutable. So naturally, a book launch concert is something that one can figure out, which we did. And let me say it was amazing. 

If you think that you need more courage to launch your thing, to raise your prices to make more money, you're thinking in the wrong way. It's like trying to catch a sunset running East. It's never going to happen. Why? Because you don't have a courage problem. You have an action problem. Your problem has literally nothing to do with your confidence or your self-worth or some magical feeling of motivation. The truth is, you're not doing the things you need to do, right?

You're not taking action day in and day out towards the thing that you want to achieve. But if you're thinking right now, Marie, you got me all wrong. I am doing lots of things, and they're not working. I got you. Just keep watching because we're going to talk about that in a few minutes. 

But first, what's the fix here? Stop waiting for courage. Start taking action. 

So, what does that even mean? When I started to figure out the book tour, I wrote down every single thing that I knew I needed to figure out, and that was my action list. So, for example, first up, what concert venues existed in New York City and which were available on my launch date, September 9th. So my action, Google concert venues near you and make calls. Number two, is there anyone I know that's hired backup dancers before and created choreography for a real concert? So my action step was text everyone you've ever met and ask them if they know choreographers. Next up, how do I not make a frigging idiot out of myself on stage in front of thousands of people? So my action here was to train and rehearse my ass off for months before the event. 

Now look, your actions don't need to be perfect at all. Let 'em be messy. Mine are, but take that action. Take it every day, day in and day out, and do it whether or not you feel like it. Make your commitment to your dream stronger than your moods. By the way, if you want a little step-by-step guide to figure anything out, get your hands on Everything Is Figureoutable. I think it's in like 36  languages and counting. 

Look, you don't need courage to take action. You take action, and then courage just takes care of itself.

In June of 1962, dozens of workers in a textile factory came down with the same physical symptoms: rashes, dizziness, and vomiting. At first, everybody thought the factory was infected with a toxic insect that was biting the workers. This became known as the June Bug Epidemic. Scientists and experts were called in to find the cause. However, none was found. Why? Because there was no toxic bug to begin with. It was an example of a very well-documented phenomenon called social contagion. 

So, social contagion is the subtle and sometimes unwitting spread of emotions and behaviors from one individual to another. Whether you like it or not, it's impacting all of us 24/7, 365. Look, I know we all like to think that we're autonomous, right? We're independent, we're such free thinkers. 

‍Newsflash! we're not! I guarantee that there are people in your life right now who are secretly controlling or at least heavily influencing all of your thoughts, and your feelings, and your behavior.

They impact your stress levels, your health, the actions you take, and ding–ding–ding, the amount of money you make. Now, the million-dollar question becomes: do the people that you interact with every day in your business and life, are they getting you closer to your goals? Or are they dragging you down? Is your social contagion crew helping you grow and become better as a human? Or are they making you more complainy and sad? If anyone that you work with, anyone on your team or a freelancer or a consultant, if they consistently underperform, if they miss deadlines, they bring drama, they bring negativity or stress to your business and your life, guess what? They’ve got to go like yesterday! 

How do you know? If every time you interact with someone, you walk away feeling worse than when you showed up? That's your clue. Look, people are probably going to get so mad at me in the comments about what I'm about to say, but my perspective, life is too short to put up with crappy behavior, and constant negativity will destroy you if you let it. So you just do you. Here's what I say. You don't have to have some big awkward therapy session or have a script to set boundaries. 

Just think about what my friend Kris Carr says: “The only time you can change other people is when they're in diapers.” 

So you might want to try this. Just keep it simple. Do a little version of the Irish Goodbye. Just behave your way into not spending time with them anymore. Just bless them on their path, and you stay on yours. No matter what, if you want to get and stay rich in every sense of that word, stop tolerating toxic vibes. 

A couple of months ago, I sat down and talked with someone who has a massive audience on social media, like I'm talking millions and millions of humans. Now, she's an amazing person. She's this fantastic creator. She's full of integrity, and I told her straight up, I said, look, one of my gifts in this world is helping women get rich. I've been doing it for decades, and I'm really, really good at it. So tell me outside of social, what's your marketing look like? 

So she started telling me a little bit about her backend operations, and then she casually slipped this in. She says, oh, and I've got a couple hundred thousand people on my email list, but I'm not doing that much with it right now. And I'm like… [Marie’s facial expression is jaw dropped in Shock]... or I'm like, I said my love. You are sitting on a frigging gold mine. Please, for the love of all things, holy, let me show you how to start engaging with all these amazing humans who actually want to hear from you. And I promise if you get this one skill right, it will turn into millions in your business and so many more lives changed. 

I've been saying this since 2001, and I'm still saying it today. Stop ignoring email if you want to maximize your money and your impact. The strategy is simple. We use social media channels to reach and engage with the largest ideal audience possible. Then, we elegantly get people off social onto our email list. That's the only place where we own the connection and own the relationship with our audience. That is also the place where we sell in a more elegant and personal and effective way. 

Write this down: never build a business on rented land, which is what every single social platform like TikTok and even YouTube and Instagram are. And from a stack cheddar perspective, the numbers just don't lie. Email generates an ROI of about 3600%, meaning that for every $1 spent on email, guess what? You get back $36 bucks. Some studies show that for every dollar you spend, you get 42 back. Now, of course, every business and every industry is different, but rich business owners know that the biggest conversion rates… they don't happen on social. They happen in your inbox. 

So, one last thing: This year, it is imperative that you get your email marketing right. You can't wing this, you can't phone it in any longer. You need an updated strategy. Here's why. There are some pretty big changes coming from Google, specifically about email marketing, and you cannot, I repeat, cannot F– this up. Otherwise, your business could get blacklisted and banned overnight. And I'm not kidding. 

If you're a B-School grad, you have lifetime access to the program. So, we're going to be going over all of these important email marketing updates together. Now, if you're not a B-Schooler yet and you are serious about getting bigger, better results this year, go to joinbschool.com. You can learn more. You can let me and my team help you get the results that you've been aiming for. 

You know, probably one of the biggest obstacles that can stop all of us. It's time. This perception that we don't have enough to do all the things that we want to do in order to grow. Now, in my experience, people who feel like they don't have enough time they really fall into one of two camps. Camp one, people who know they're not spending their time on the right stuff. Camp two people who don't. 

So I want to focus on camp two because I think that's got the biggest potential for transformation. How do you know if you're in camp two, simple. You say things like this, but Marie, I'm already doing so many things to grow my business. I'm working all the time. I'm working mornings and nights and weekends, but I don't have any results. This sucks! 

Now look, if you're truly doing a lot of things right now, and you are doing them consistently for six months or a year or more, and you're still not getting where you want to go, guess what? You're doing the wrong things. Maybe you're spending weeks trying to get your logo right, but you haven't even made a single sale yet. Or maybe you're spending way too much time trying to get famous on social, but you don't even have anything real to sell or offer quite yet. 

If you are not getting the results you want and you're working ALL the time, my bet is that you've got the wrong roadmap or no roadmap at all. It's kind of like trying to bake a vegan cake using a recipe for steak au poivre. It's not going to work! EVER! 

Now, in a minute, I'm going to show you how to figure out the right things to do a lot faster. But first, realize this. Every single one of us has to pay attention to whether or not we're using our time in the smartest way. Nobody gets a pass here and auditing your activities. It's not a one-time event, right? You got to keep reevaluating this. I am constantly asking myself the hard questions about whether or not I'm actually doing the right stuff to get where I want to go at this particular stage and season of my life. 

So, I need you to challenge yourself. I want you to evolve what you spend your time on. Raise the bar for you and for your team. Otherwise, if we just keep doing the same old stuff again and again, we stagnate, we start to backslide, and, of course, we lose our edge. 

So this year, if you want to get some big wins in your bank account, stop saying that you don't have enough time. Just start assuming that you do have the time, but you've just been doing the wrong stuff, and that's no big deal. We all do it. It's easy to change. 

Which brings me to my final point. Did you know that there are people out there right now living the life you want or something pretty close to it? They've got the kind of energy and strength that you want. Yes, at your age and even older. They've got the kind of relationship you want, and they're making the kind of money that you want to make. 

Or even, let's break this down even further. Let's say you want to learn how to speak Italian or you want to learn how to speed read or dance or play guitar. There are people out there that started out exactly like you at ground zero, knowing nothing, and now can do all those things and more. 

Now, look, I'm not telling you this to make you feel like crap about yourself. I'm telling you this, to get you inspired and fired up no matter what it is that you want to achieve, there are people out there right now that can help you get that thing faster and easier than trying to figure it out on your own. And in terms of your business goals, stop making it harder than it needs to be. If you want to radically increase your speed, meaning how quickly you get results and increase your chances for success, you’ve got to learn from people who already have the kind of results that you want.

Look, I do this day in and day out constantly. I don't need to reinvent the wheel. I mean, who's got time for that? In this day in age of online education, where some of the top experts in the world will show you how to shorten your learning curve, if you don't take advantage of this, that's just dumb, and you are not dumb. Let me give you an example outside of business. 

So I have this actor friend, right? And she got called about being the lead in a huge musical. So she's an amazing actor, but she's not really a trained singer. Immediately, I thought to myself, I got to call my friend Roger Love. He's one of the best voice coaches in the world. He's worked with Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga and the List on and on. 

And I said to my actor friend, I said, look, if you really want to land this role, go get coaching from him. Train with the best. Do not leave your dream to chance. And I say the same thing to you right now. Stop screwing around trying to piece all this stuff together. Growing a business it's hard enough. Stop making it harder than it needs to be. Trying to figure everything out on your own. 

Just go find a successful person that you vibe with, right? Someone who's already gotten the results that you want, who also, and this is key, has a track record of getting results for other people. And then do whatever it takes to go coach with them or train with them or learn from them. 

And look, if I'm that person for you, if you want to learn how to make a ton of cash running a business that legitimately changes lives, go to join B-School dot com. We've got another cohort coming up. We've already helped over 80,000 people, and if it's the right fit, we'd love to help you, too. 

No matter what, get off the struggle bus! Life is hard enough. I know you know this, but business is hard enough, too. And in this day and age, you do not need to reinvent the wheel. Learn from other people, get the skills you need, and stop making it harder than it needs to be. Until next time, stay on your game and keep going for your big dreams because the world really does need that very special gift that only you have.